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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24381931">a hundred jewels between teeth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneirois/pseuds/oneirois'>oneirois</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>&amp; his editor felix, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Authors &amp; Editors, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Misunderstandings, Slow Burn, author dimitri</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:48:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>27,185</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24381931</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneirois/pseuds/oneirois</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dimitri, in the vaguest of senses, knows he’s good enough to make the story sound intriguing to an audience. It’s none of these things that kill him.</p><p>It’s the man sitting in one of the farther back rows, dead center, back slouched in a way that suggests comfort over disinterest. His hair is dark and sheen, pulled back into a floppy ponytail, and the glint of his earrings catches Dimitri’s eyes each time he glances up. It’s all the more startling when those eyes are already on him. </p><p>Felix is a slow death. He is a gruesome one.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>105</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. chapter one</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>just a general TW for mental health issues (anxiety, depression, disassociation/disassociative episodes, talks of anti-psychotic meds, etc.) the usual for dimitri. also, a very bad accident is discussed many times throughout the story. there is one particularly bad break down, but it's pretty obvious when it's coming on so skip if you need. take care!</p><p>ALSO !! i wanted a chance to write dimitri &amp; felix in a universe where they weren't so boggled down by their various traumas. there are still traumatic events within this fic, and the after effects, but it is nothing as extreme as is in canon, therefore their respective reactions and personalities aren't as intense!!! basically this au was a chance for me to write them as how i imagine they'd be in a happier, easier world. just wanted to preface that!</p><p>+ alot of charas will make appearances but i only tagged the super important ones to the story !</p><p>++ title is taken from lorde’s “team”</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd dies, he’s nineteen years old, a sophomore in college, and standing at the rickety podium in front of his forty-two student creative writing class.</p><p>It isn’t stage fright. In fact, Dimitri's never really <i>minded</i> speaking in front of people—though when it’s something he has spent two weeks (fourteen days, sixteen hours, and twenty-four minutes) working on, day and night, it’s nerve-wracking enough to unsettle even the most steele-nerved person, which he certainly is not.</p><p>But, really, it’s not the nerves that kill him. It’s not the beads of sweat he can feel sliding down the neckline of his shirt, his skin rapidly warming under the fluorescent lights hanging a bit too low for comfort. It’s not the grate he can feel on his throat, pulled and sore from where he reread this exact excerpt precisely sixteen times to himself in the mirror last night. So many times that his roommate, Claude, had to bang against his bedroom door for Dimitri to finally get the hint and shut up. It's not even that he’s still unsure about the ending of this story he’s going to read, but he closed and printed the document regardless because he wanted it to be over.</p><p>Dimitri, in the vaguest of senses, knows he’s good enough to make the story sound intriguing to an audience. It’s none of these things that kill him.</p><p>It’s the man sitting in one of the farther back rows, dead center, back slouched in a way that suggests comfort over disinterest. His hair is dark and sheen, pulled back into a floppy ponytail, and the glint of his earrings catches Dimitri’s eyes each time he glances up. It’s all the more startling when those eyes are already on him. </p><p>Felix is a slow death. He is a gruesome one. He joined Dimitri’s creative writing class a month into the first semester, and Dimitri knows little about him, other than: he’s nineteen as well, some kind of English-related major, and he’s an incredible writer. Mind blowingly incredible. The only time he’s ever talked to Dimitri was when they got assigned groups to do peer reviews and he gave an extremely thorough, detailed, and <i>scatching</i> review on a piece Dimitri wrote ten minutes before class began.</p><p>They’re over halfway done with second semester now. Most weeks, Felix is only there for two or three days, and for those two or three days, Dimitri feels like he can’t <i>breathe</i>. He doesn’t have a crush. Really, genuinely, he doesn’t; it’s nothing of that sort. It’s something much deeper and personal and closer to his heart—he admires Felix. On the most base level, he looks up to him.</p><p>And now Dimitri is about to slaughter his own painstakingly crafted piece in front of him.</p><p>The first time Dimitri dies, he is nineteen years old. Felix’s blades are sharp and unforgiving.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>At twenty-five and a half years old, Dimitri has: three books published, a moderately nice loft apartment, a tabby cat, and one <i>hell</i> of an editor.<p>Byleth tears through Dimitri’s apartment like she owns the place. “Dimitri?” </p><p>From his bed up the stairs, Dimitri can picture Byleth, standing in the entryway that’s <i>technically</i> also the kitchen and throwing down the copy of keys she stole onto the bar. A second later, Dimitri hears the clink and rattle of metal on granite. He smiles at the exposed rafters that make up his ceiling. </p><p>“Up here,” Dimitri calls back. </p><p>“It’s almost eleven. Did you just wake up?” </p><p>Byleth is standing at the foot of his bed now. Dimitri guesses he must have dozed a bit more, because he hadn’t even heard her climb the stairs. “No. I’ve been awake for an hour.”</p><p>“Just staring at your ceiling?” Blyieth moves out of his line of sight. She messes with something on Dimitri’s desk, and a moment later, his eyepatch flops weakly against his chest. Dimitri raises his eyebrows at it, but lifts himself just enough up off of the bed to tie it behind his head. Byleth still hasn’t turned around, her hands moving in front of her, and just as he realizes what she must be rifling through—</p><p>“The manuscript is coming along nicely, then?”</p><p>Dimitri finally pulls his body from the hull of his bed and drags a hand over his bedraggled hair. “I just need to work through this one scene but it’s not coming together. I can’t make it sound <i>right</i>.”</p><p>Byleth nods, and then she throws a thick manila folder onto Dimitri’s bed from where she is standing at the desk. “Maybe this will kick you out of it.”</p><p>The folder weighs heavy on Dimitri’s feet. He looks down at it, leaning forward to tip the cover back with his index finger. The font is too small, too far away and too upside down to read, but he catches a few keywords. He looks back up to Byleth.</p><p>“What?” </p><p>“I’m quitting.” She says. Dimitri stares blankly at her; partly because his brain is still groggy from sleep, and partly because—<i>what?</i> “Not from <i>you</i> specifically or anything, I’m just leaving my publishing house, which technically means I can’t work for you anymore. Seriously, you know it’s nothing personal, I just—go where the paycheck takes me, and that isn’t Garreg Mach anymore.”</p><p>It’s startlingly casual. Dimitri is still in his sleep clothes, hair still mussed from tossing and turning against the pillow. He's still in <i>bed</i>. He quickly glances back down at the manila folder. </p><p>This must mean he hasn’t been making Blyeth enough money. It makes sense. He hasn’t put anything out in two years, and he really doesn’t mean to drag, but this one just isn’t coming to him. In fact, before Byleth had arrived, he really had been staring at his ceiling and thinking about scrapping it altogether. Blyeth has been with him for three years, the first official editor Dimitri has worked with who wasn’t some person he found on craigslist, and Dimitri failed to uphold his end of the deal. Essentially.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Dimitri says, and he really is. Byleth has been nothing but good to him: whipping his writing into shape when it needs it the most, giving Dimitri a stern talking to when he falls into the kind of mood where he just wants to trash all of his existing manuscripts. Dimitri drags his palm over his eye and exhales, long and slow. The manila folder at his feet now feels like a deadweight.</p><p>“Why are you apologizing?”</p><p>“Editors only really quit when their authors aren’t doing enough to keep them.” Dimitri says halfway into his palm. He drops his hand to his lap and looks forlornly at the folder. </p><p>“I’ve been in this industry longer than you have, Dimitri. Trust me when I say that I’m not leaving because you didn’t do enough to <i>keep me</i>.” Byleth pulls back one of the balls of the Newton's cradle on Dimitri’s desk. She releases it, watches them bounce back and forth for a few more moments, and then she looks at Dimitri. “If it were up to me, I’d stay with you. I enjoy working with you quite a bit, but I literally can’t afford it anymore. And I know you’ve been stuck lately. Things have been slow, and the publishing house has really been riding your back over this, but your new editor will pull you out of it. He’s a real stickler for deadlines, that one. Don’t be worried. He’s good.”</p><p>“I—” Dimitri has many things he wants to address in that statement, but; “New editor?”</p><p>“You didn’t think I’d just be leaving you out to dry, did you?” Byleth gives him a look of incredulity. “Read the file. I said he’s good, and he is. Relatively new to the field, but I’ve trained him a bit. He’s interned for a few publishing houses.”</p><p>Dimitri grumbles, but he pulls the manila folder closer to himself so that he can flop back towards the bed without it falling off. “What’s his name?”</p><p>“Felix Fraldarius,” Byleth recites. She’s fiddling with a paperclip she must have procured from somewhere on Dimitri’s rigidly organized desk. “Have you heard of him? He’s really well known in these circles. Well, not that you follow any circles.”</p><p>Dimitri frowns. “What is that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“You don’t have any friends.” Byleth often says things that aren’t necessarily true, just because she, and he quotes, <i>likes Dimitri’s passion when he is defending his honor</i>.</p><p>“I have friends.” He responds, plainly. He isn’t quite sure what that has to do with <i>these circles</i>. “You’ve met them multiple times.”</p><p>“Claude doesn’t really count. He’s like the stray cat you feed once and can’t get to leave. You and Dedue have some kind of sworn blood-oath brotherhood that I am not entirely sure counts as <i>friendship</i>. I’ll let you have Ingrid, and I don’t even have anything to say about Hilda because she is friends with everyone. And I don’t count because I’m your editor.”</p><p>“You aren’t anymore,” Dimitri reminds her, which brings it all back down to earth. Byleth’s lips draw downwards and she rubs her hand along her jaw, thinking. Dimitri fiddles with the edge of his eyepatch.</p><p>“Regardless, we’re still going to be friends,” She says decidedly, after a generous pause. Dimitri wants to comment on how she just said they technically <i>weren’t</i> friends, but he isn’t in a particularly petty mood this morning. He’d rather not talk about it all together.</p><p>“Coffee?” He asks. Byleth smiles warmly at him, apparently relieved, and it eases the trepidation brewing in Dimitri’s gut.</p><p>“Please,” She responds.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Dimitri, <i>somehow</i>, doesn’t get a chance to read the file until he’s all ready for bed. His day has been hectic, to say the absolute least. He helped Byleth move out of her office in the publishing house, carefully arranging all of her things in cardboard boxes and carrying them out to her car repeatedly for a few hours. Then they met Claude for lunch, which turned into drinks with Hilda, which turned into going back to Dimitri’s apartment to force <i>him</i> to pay for a movie they didn’t even watch thirty minutes of because <i>he</i> apparently has the most money in his bank account right now, even if it really isn’t <i>that</i> much. Dimitri can’t even complain about it all; he’s happy, to be able to do something, anything, for all of them.<p>And then, after they had all left for the night, Dimitri wrote.</p><p>Inspiration strikes from random and often undue places. For him, it had been a poorly shot, edited, and scripted sex scene, in which there had been nothing sexy in its entirety. Dimitri blushed the entire way through it and kept his eyes on the T.V. stand, but it had given him the solution he needed to move past a hurdle in the plot. He got all the way through a startling five pages before he remembered—</p><p>He would need someone to edit this. An editor, per se, and just as he was grabbing his phone to call Byleth, he spotted the manila folder on his bed in the corner of his eye. Untouched from where it lay this morning.</p><p>Dimitri spins fully in his desk chair, which creaks ominously under his weight. He stares at the folder until he’s sure his pupils have burned a hole straight through it before deciding to wash his face and brush his teeth and <i>then</i> deal with it.</p><p>And now he’s here, face freshly washed and sheen, mouth still minty, staring down at the unmarked manila folder balanced on the lap of his flannel pajamas. With a quick sigh through his nose, bracing himself as if he’s preparing for pain, Dimitri flips the cover back.</p><p>He moves past a copy of Byleth’s resignation letter. There are a few other formalities he skims before he gets to what he really wants, and Dimitri had managed to forget about the whole ‘Felix’ part of this situation until the big, fat, bolded name is staring him right in the face.</p><p>Felix Fraldarius. A name Dimitri had almost forgotten completely, amidst the absolute shitstorm that has overtaken his life. Four years since he’s even heard that name, since his college graduation, the first time he had even heard Felix’s last name. <i>If</i> this is even <i>that</i> Felix.</p><p>They weren’t anywhere near close enough to stay in contact, and for all Dimitri knows this could be an entirely different person, but it’s still shocking to think that perhaps the Felix he knew turned out to be an editor. Dimitri never actually knew what Felix’s major or career plan was, but he certainly thought he had been on the same path as Dimitri: becoming an author.</p><p>If this really is the man that he once knew replacing Byleth as his new <i>editor</i>, the sole person with whom he spends the most time and spills the deepest depths of his mind to, Dimitri doesn’t want to think about the implications of it. </p><p>He closes the file, places it on his nightstand, and goes to sleep.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>By the time the sun is coming in through his bedroom window, Dimitri feels like he has slept a grand total of two hours. Amazingly enough, he cannot even attribute it to his frequent bouts of insomnia—he had been <i>thinking</i>, of all things.<p>His head hurts, and his mouth is dry. Dimitri lies motionless in bed long enough for his cat to become seemingly worried, kneading at his thigh. It leaps off of the bed a moment later and disappears somewhere into the apartment. It takes Dimitri an even longer amount of time to hear the jangling noise from downstairs, and—someone is trying to break-in to his apartment.</p><p>By the sound of it, they have a key. Dimitri instantly settles, because it is likely not a break-in. Probably Byleth, because she likes these early morning visits, even though Dimitri has no idea what time it actually is. Byleth finally gets the door open and closes it uncharacteristically gently, probably pocketing the keys, because Dimitri doesn’t hear them slap against the counter. And then, it is silent. </p><p>Dimitri startles. Maybe this actually <i>isn’t</i> Byleth, and really, genuinely a robber, who finally got in and took one look at Dimitri’s mismatched Pottery Barn and Target decor—seventy-five percent of which were gifts, which he had proudly kept displayed—and decided there was nothing worth taking. </p><p>Oh, hell. Dimitri figures it could be any one of the five people who knows where he keeps his spare key, so he bites the bullet. It is too early, and he is too tired, for him to allow his mind to play such games.</p><p> “Up here,” Dimitri calls out as best as he can, though his voice comes out sounding like it’s been through a grinder a few times. He goes to clear his throat and try again when he hears soft footsteps moving towards his staircase, and then the noise of someone actually climbing the stairs, and Dimitri, for some unknown reason, had not actually expected them to come. He is woefully unprepared.</p><p>Once they come closer to the top, the footsteps gradually slow down until they come to a complete standstill. Dimitri, mind still sluggish with sleep, furrows his eyebrows and is about to push himself up and greet the intruder when—</p><p>“Are you Dimitri?”</p><p>Dimitri jolts, and then freezes, visibly enough for the other person to do the same. That is certainly not the voice of any of the five people who know where he keeps his spare key. Dimitri freezes even more, because Byleth has quit, and Dimitri thinks he remembers her telling him that his new editor would be stopping by today. And, funnily enough, his new editor just so happens to be a man named ‘Felix Fraldarius’. Dimitri freezes so stiffly he thinks he could pass as a corpse.</p><p>He counts to five in his head.</p><p>Felix Fraldarius is standing at the foot of Dimitri’s stairs. He’s got on an outfit comprised of different darks: black slacks, a dark grey sweater, black shoes, a black coat folded over his arm, black hair, black earrings in both ears—he doesn’t <i>look</i> too imposing, but his demeanor makes Dimitri wince, just a tad, a bit too open in the early waking hours.</p><p>Felix is well put together and <i>clearly</i> commands respect with just a glance, and Dimitri is in his ratty <i>Pokemon</i> shirt that Hilda got him from Hot Topic two years ago, and he’s not wearing anything under except for a pair of black boxers, and he knows—precisely—that this shirt falls just long enough to come to the top of his thighs. Byleth has seen him buck <i>naked</i> before in a variety of situations and settings, but that was <i>her</i>, and this is Felix: slow death Felix, who is Dimitri’s new editor.</p><p>“Yes,” Dimitri finally responds, in what he abruptly realizes is an awkward amount of time later. “That is me.” </p><p>Felix blinks. Dimitri doesn’t think Felix recognizes him, and it would be fair, because Dimitri hardly recognizes him either. He's older and more mature in a way that extends beyond physical appearance, and he and Dimitri were only barely colleagues in college. Dimitri surely knows, at the very least, that <i>his</i> physical appearance has changed since then.</p><p>Which reminds him—he does not even have his eyepatch on. Dimitri’s entire stomach freezes over.</p><p>“It’s been a while,” Felix says, and then, oddly looks shocked at the words. Dimitri feels every remaining drop of warmth flee his body in truly record speed. “You look...”</p><p>Dimitri immediately decides that he does not want to hear the end of that phrase. He blurts, “You remember me?”</p><p>Felix blinks back at him. “Uh, yeah. I do. Your name isn’t exactly common.”</p><p>So—this Felix, without a doubt, is <i>Felix</i>. Dimitri doesn’t know what to say, because the first time he had met Byleth was in her office at the publishing house, not while he was still lying in bed in his underwear. He clenches and unclenches the comforter in his fists and glances towards his bathroom, wondering how quickly he could make it there in time and not fall while grabbing the pair of sweatpants he hopefully left on the floor in front of the sink. </p><p>“It is—um—nice to see you again. I was not expecting you this morning, I apologize. If you’ll just give me a second..” Dimitri trails off before glancing back at Felix.</p><p>Felix is looking at him blankly, as if he can see straight through the covers and knows exactly what Dimitri is being so jumpy about. He nods once and turns his back to Dimitri, and Dimitri peels the covers off of his legs and tries not to grimace at the cold air on his bare thighs. He <i>really</i> chose his skimpiest pair of boxers to sleep in. Dimitri’s own luck amazes him.</p><p>He slowly climbs out of the bed and chances a look towards Felix, who is examining one of Dimitri’s bookshelves. Dimitri crosses his room as quickly and quietly as he can to get to the bathroom. Once inside, with the door firmly shut, he stares hard at himself in the mirror. The frown is all encompassing. He has left his eyepatch on his desk.</p><p>Thankfully, his hair has grown long enough that it offers some shielding, and with the angle Felix had been standing at it’s likely that he hadn’t even seen the thick scar bisecting Dimitri’s eye. Yet—</p><p>Muttering to himself, he grabs the pair of black sweatpants he had guessed would be on his bathroom floor and tugs them on. He peers around to see if there’s a stray shirt anywhere on the ground, but to his utmost frustration, he’s stuck with the Charmander shirt that has far too loose of a neckline and a quarter sized hole in the left sleeve. Dimitri stares at himself in the mirror, hurriedly splashing ice cold water on his face and gargling mint mouthwash. He doesn’t want to spend too much time in the bathroom because that gives Felix even more free-range of his room, so Dimitri quickly slips back out not even five minutes later and finds Felix in the same exact spot he left him in.</p><p>Dimitri uses the moment to grab his eyepatch and fix it against his face. Once adjusted, as well as he can be in this situation, he clears his throat. Felix pivots on the heel of his shoes.</p><p>“What are you doing here?” Dimitri asks. He hopes it doesn’t come off as rude as it feels, but he’s never known of a first writer/editor encounter being in such.. circumstances, and he’s a bit curious.</p><p>Felix’s eyes flicker to the left for a split second. “Byleth... thoroughly briefed me on your schedule and whatnot. She said this was the time of day that she usually came by to check up on the manuscript, so… yeah. She gave me the key.”</p><p>“That—“ Dimitri cuts himself off and balls his fists, because it certainly is not the time of day she typically would stop by. It likely hasn’t even reached the double-digits of the morning yet. Felix looks like he doesn’t know what to do, so Dimitri hurries to respond. “If it’s easier for you, I can just email you my current manuscript so you can work from the office. I know that Byleth and I’s arrangement wasn’t… typical.”</p><p>He is well aware that his schedule, work ethic, and relationship with her were all notably peculiar, and Felix seems like the office type. Even though Dimitri <i>knows</i> that he works best one-on-one and face-to-face, he suggests the idea anyways. Such is his life. </p><p>Something that looks like relief—or, perhaps, confusion—flashes across Felix’s face, but he nods nonetheless. “Sure. Whatever works with me. Byleth already emailed me the current pages you have, so I’m up to date. We can arrange weekly meetups, too. The publishing house said they want this one out by next month.”</p><p>Well, that’s <i>new</i>. Dimitri knows they gave Byleth deadlines but she never <i>told</i> him directly about them. He always knew when a deadline was approaching anyways, because Byleth rode his back like a jockey until the manuscript was finished and she could edit it, but Dimitri never really had the looming date hanging over his head like a storm cloud. Byleth seems to have noticed that it wouldn’t have done him any good, without him having to even tell her. He feels his mouth fall open, just a tad.</p><p>“I—okay. Yes, that will work.” Dimitri says, because he thinks it will. It will have to. “So… you’ve read it all?” </p><p>Felix nods. “I have, it’s very good. I’ll hold any critiques for our meeting, but you are a skilled writer. Byleth has told me as much, but it’s still refreshing to see.”</p><p>Dimitri can feel the steam coming out of his ears from his brain apparently short circuiting and rewiring. It’s too early in the morning for this, because even though Felix said that Byleth told him <i>this</i> was the time she usually came, she had told Felix a time that was at least two hours earlier. </p><p>“Thank you,” Dimitri’s responses are not typically as <i>bland</i>, but, really—what is he supposed to say?  </p><p>Felix doesn’t look particularly affected either way. “We’ll be in contact. Judging at the rate you’ve been going, I think we can have this one finished in two weeks.”</p><p>“Yes, I’ll email you. Thank you for stopping by,” Dimitri says, and he wants to show Felix out, perhaps offer him a cup of coffee (he seems like the type to enjoy a good French Press, and Dimitri quite enjoys making them), but Felix is already moving down the stairs as soon as Dimitri finishes speaking.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>True to his word, Felix stays in contact. Dimitri doesn’t know why he was expecting anything else, but maybe after thousands upon thousands of unanswered text messages sent to Byleth, it’s a possibility that he’s built up some trust issues.<p>A week after their initial meeting, Felix emails him. It is only when he’s sitting at his kitchen counter with his laptop open in front of him and he gets the notification <i>ping</i> of a new email in his inbox does he realize: he never gave Felix his number. </p><p>He’d just assumed that Felix would get it from Byleth or from the publishing house, but he clearly hasn’t, which strikes him as odd. Otherwise, why would he be emailing Dimitri to set up a <i>brunch</i> meeting?</p><p>Dimitri stares at his dimming laptop screen. Over email, Felix reads full parts editor. Perfect grammar, punctuation, and a sophisticated vocabulary even for something as mundane as meeting over brunch, and something about the whole ordeal makes Dimitri shiver. </p><p>They agree to meet at a suave new restaurant that only opened three weeks ago. It has seven stellar reviews on Yelp. Dimitri scrolls the website and looks at the menu so he’ll already know what he wants to order, and even an appetizer of bread rolls costs a pretty penny. Dimitri learns more about Felix from this choice alone than he had in their five minute meeting.</p><p>They allot a time for Wednesday afternoon, which gives Dimitri roughly twenty hours to whip his last few pages into shape. He's been lazily writing this past week, keeping his laptop close at hand so he could write a paragraph or two when he felt the need, only leaving his apartment to buy dinner or to get fresh air or do some people-watching. </p><p>He’s entering the final stages of his novel-writing process, the one Claude always calls ‘the hibernation’; a period where he’s coming down to the last few chapters and all he wants to do is write and write and write some more. This is typically the time that he and Byleth would pull all-nighters together, the endless sound of Dimitri clacking away on his keyboard and reading his dialogue outloud to Byleth, who would offer corrections when necessary. It had really expedited the entire process, and done wonders for Dimitri’s motivation.</p><p>Personally, it was one of Dimitri’s favorite parts of the writing process. He doesn’t know how to verbalize how important it was for him to Felix, who most definitely would not agree to such a situation, so Dimitri compromises and agrees to brunch, and they go from there.</p><p>“It just seems a little harried.”</p><p>Dimitri pokes around the demolished remnants of his poached egg with the tip of his fork and does not meet Felix’s light eyes. “How so? What can I change?”</p><p>Felix’s frown is audible. They’re only thirty minutes into this meeting, and so far, Dimitri has made him frown a grand total of twelve times, each varying degrees of severity. “It’s not like you need to <i>change</i> anything. I just feel like this ending is being squeezed out of you. If we need to push the deadline back I can talk to the publishing house.”</p><p>There is resignation in his voice, crisp and cutting. Dimitri looks up, and Felix’s face looks the exact same as it has each time Dimtri has looked at him; a little impassive, a tiny bit annoyed, mostly down-to-business. It's similar to how he looked when they did peer reviews in college, just less involved.</p><p>“No, there’s no need for that. I’ll have it finished by the deadline.” Dimitri responds. “I’ll try to take some more creative approaches when writing these last two chapters. I already know what is going to happen, I’m just struggling a bit with how to get there.”</p><p>The admission is the most that Dimitri can give. The coffee here is weak for his liking, and he is a bit preoccupied with thinking about the prescription for his medication that he needs to get filled after this. Dimitri feels awful about his wandering thoughts, because it is <i>unlike</i> him to be so detached, but Felix—</p><p>It looks like there’s something he wants to say, but he simply nods and takes a sip from his ceramic mug. Dimitri takes a bite of soggy egg. The interior decor of this place is slightly lacking, but Dimitri made sure to pick a table next to the window so he could watch all the passer-bys in relative peace. </p><p>“If you want to discuss this more in-depth, we could meet at my office one day later this week?” Felix proposes out of the blue, possibly hours after their last conversation had already ended, sounding as though it had taken a great deal of effort to offer even that.</p><p> Dimitri sighs, because meeting in Felix’s office, sitting in the lumpy leather chairs and discussing Dimitri’s most prized possession—his <i>writing</i>—as if it were a business transaction makes his stomach turn.</p><p>He knows what Felix wants, and what he expects from Dimitri. He wants Dimitri to finish this manuscript as soon as possible so they can get it sent off and published. Then, Dimitri can feed Felix some ideas for his next book, he will start writing, and—rinse and repeat. Felix wants him to be what all editors want: a clean-cut author. An author who can help them make a name for themselves.</p><p>Dimitri isn’t even sure he could call himself an author some days, with the backwardness of his methods.</p><p>He doesn’t want to be so pessimistic about this. In fact, it's an issue he has been working on for some time. He wants to give Felix a chance, he <i>does</i>, but he also doesn’t want to disappoint him, or trouble him, in any way possible. He has met editors like Felix before. They mean business, and treat writing as such, and certainly don’t have time for Dimitri’s demanding… everything. Schedule, routine, moods. <i>Everything</i>. Dimitri knows he is a handful. He, of all people, is well aware of the fact.</p><p>Besides, some small part of Dimitri trusts Felix’s process. He is still extremely talented; that much Dimitri remembers from their school days. He is just not sure if he trusts himself not to cripple beneath it.</p><p>Dimitri sighs again, quietly, finally mustering up a response. “I’m alright. What about you?”</p><p>Felix just nods. He looks at Dimitri, but Dimitri has nothing else to say.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Dimitri’s characters tend to have a love-hate relationship with him. Most days, on the <i>good</i> days, he can get into the headspace like slipping on a second skin and write. Other days, like today, he can’t reach them whatsoever, elusive as fog slipping over a river.<p>It’s perhaps the most frustrating thing Dimitri will ever experience; not being able to write or understand his <i>own</i> characters. He’s beginning to realize that Felix really was right—it is strained, though Dimitri doesnt think he would call it ‘harried’. In order to fix it adequately enough, Dimitri would need time, and patience, two of the things he doesn’t have in store at the moment.</p><p>So, he goes to Ingrid’s house. It is in the city, only a few blocks away from Dimitri’s own apartment, so it is not really a <i>house</i>, but it suits its purpose well enough.</p><p>Dimitri decides to walk there today. He’s not wearing proper walking shoes, and not even a third of the way there his back gets damp with sweat, so he pulls his hoodie off and holds it in his arms instead. Halfway there, the breeze picks up and his bare arms get cold, the flimsy t-shirt doing nothing in the way of warmth, so he pulls the hoodie back on and speeds up, hands buried in the front pocket. </p><p>Ingrid opens her door like she had been expecting Dimitri. She’s wearing her pilates outfit, which brings to Dimitri’s attention how oddly early in the morning it is, and the smell of black tea wafts out from around her. Dimitri steps in the entryway, toes his shoes off, and frowns. </p><p>“What’s up?” Ingrid asks. Her socks are purple, and Dimitri watches her feet as they cross over a brown rug and onto the tiles of her kitchen. He follows, dutifully.</p><p>“I don't know,” He admits, and sits himself on one of her tiny barstools. She busies herself with a tea kettle, reaching up into the cabinet near her head for a second mug. She is always like this; arms held wide open with minimal questions asked. “I think the only reason I could write was because I had Byleth.”</p><p>“You were writing before you even knew who she was.”</p><p>“Not professionally.”</p><p>Ingrid looks at him over her shoulder, a few pieces of hair falling from her bun and sliding along her cheekbones. She has an eyebrow raised. “Byleth doesn’t make you a writer. <i>You</i> make you a writer.” She says, looking immensely proud of herself for it. Dimitri smiles.</p><p>“That was profound. Maybe you’re the author here.”</p><p>He says, sincerely. She always has known just what to say.</p><p>“Not everybody can be a writer, you know,” Ingrid shakes her head. “I guess you either have it or you don’t.”</p><p>Personally, Dimitri isn’t sure that’s necessarily true. He whipped his writing style into shape for sixteen years, and he is still doing so with every passing day. It’s not like he was just born with these abilities—if that’s what they could even be called. He had to work for them, and by that logic, anybody could be a writer.</p><p>Dimitri hesitates. Mentioning this to Ingrid would only throw them headfirst into a debate. She alway seems to think that Dimitri is diminishing <i>himself</i>.</p><p>“I guess.” Is what he settles on replying. Ingrid brings him over a mug of tea, and doesn’t press the point.</p><p>Instead, she raises a new one. “Is this about your new editor?”</p><p>Dimitri feels a chill. The mention of Felix Fraldarius comes with the reminder of the deadline, something Dimitri came here to escape for a bit, as selfish as it is. </p><p>“Yes,” Dimitri admits, weakly. ”He works differently than what I’m used to. I only have a few more days before the final copy of my manuscript is due.”</p><p>“Maybe you should try talking to him. He seems like a reasonable enough guy, I’m sure you could come up with something that would work for the both of you.” Ingrid comments, perfectly reasonable as she always is, and Dimitri raises his eyebrows.</p><p>“You know him?”</p><p>Ingrid smiles into her mug. “No, I read his linkedin. And a few online forums.”</p><p>Dimitri doesn’t dare venture into online forums of the writing and editing world. It is a very distinct and peculiar <i>niche</i> in which no author should ever hope to see their name. They’re brutal. Moments after Dimitri had published his first book, he hastily created an account with one of his throw away emails, still too young and naive to know that things take time to reach the public, books especially. Nobody mentioned his book for all of the seven minutes he stayed on, but the things that he saw written about other authors by other authors and editors alike made <i>him</i> want to cry.</p><p>Point being, he has no idea what Ingrid was doing in such a place, or how she even knows of them. “Forums?”</p><p>“Yeah. Everybody holds <i>Felix Fraldarius</i> in pretty high regards. Apparently, he’s made his mark with various internships at the best publishing houses across the Eastern seaboard.” She reads it in a way that suggests she’s reciting a quote word for word. “There was one nasty comment, but—”</p><p>Dimitri doesn’t want to jump on it, but his nerves get the best of him: “What? What did it say?”</p><p>Ingrid takes a pointedly loud sip of her tea. “Honestly, I think it was a friend. Somebody named Sylvain-something. It seemed like an inside joke. Didn’t raise any flags in my book.”</p><p>Dimitri deflates. He finally takes a drink from his mug, a bit lukewarm on his tongue, and turns their brief conversation over in his head. Ingrid seems content enough to sit in silence with him.</p><p><i>Didn’t raise any flags in my book</i>, she had said. Dimitri looks at her, his friend since he was eight years old. Dedue had been the one to hold his hand throughout the entire funeral and subsequent two hour service, when Dimitri was twenty-one and shaking like a leaf, but it was Ingrid who walked him the six miles home, because he still could not stomach the thought of sitting in a car. </p><p>“Wait—were you researching him for my benefit?” Dimitri asks, raising his eyebrow at the thought. He had trusted Byleth blindly when she had said his new editor was good, but apparently, Ingrid hadn’t done the same. </p><p>Ingrid looks at him like it should have been obvious and it is silly that he’s even asking. “Of course. Why else would I read his <i>linkedin</i>?”</p><p>The open admission startles Dimitri into a laugh. Ingrid appears to be pleased with herself, a tiny smile curling her lips, so Dimitri lets it come more freely, just to keep that look on his friend's face.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>A week after his impromptu trip to Ingrid’s house, Dimitri is entering his third hour of playing a Zelda game on his Switch when the door to his apartment swings open. He hadn’t even heard a key in the lock.<p>Far too used to his friends breaking and entering, Dimitri doesn’t look away from the game. This proves to be his first mistake of the afternoon. The shoes that clunk across his wooden floor from the kitchen are heavy, and before he can move quickly enough to pause the game and look over his shoulder, a heavy file of paper lands square on his lap.</p><p>Dimitri doesn’t jump, but it is a near thing. He finally manages to hit <i>pause</i>, barely glances over the paper in his lap, and cranes his neck to look over his shoulder at one Felix Fraldarius, hair pooling down the front of his shoulders. He is somehow the last person Dimitri had been expecting on a long list of potential break-in suspects. The sunlight coming in through the window makes his skin glow.</p><p>“The final copy, with my minimal edits and corrections. Publishing house wanted you to read it  before we begin printing, <i>obviously</i>.”</p><p>Two and a half weeks. That is all it has taken for Felix to apparently become comfortable enough with Dimitri to let more of his natural attitude slip through his professional demeanor, and it surely is an <i>attitude</i>. Dimitri looks at the printed printer paper that contains all of what has been his life's work for the past several months. He wonders how it will have held up, being passed between editors as it was. Dimitri has learned that, similar to authors themselves, each and every editor has their own voice. He could pick out a Byleth-edited manuscript from an entire bookshelf of edited manuscripts.</p><p>“Alright,” Dimitri responds. Similar to how Felix has grown comfortable with loosening up around Dimitri, Dimitri has grown comfortable with Felix’s sharp tongue. He picks up the paper and nods towards the empty couch cushion beside him. “Have a seat.”</p><p>“Oh, no—I have a meeting that I can’t miss.” Felix looks thrown by Dimitri’s offer, though it had been more of a formality than anything. </p><p>Dimitri raises his eyebrows. “It will only take about twenty minutes. I’d like to have you here, so I can run off any suggestions as they come,” Dimitri says, honestly. “Could you spare that?”</p><p>Felix looks mildly unsettled, but he nods, albeit slowly. He shrugs his coat off of his shoulders and comes around the front of the couch to sit, carefully, next to Dimitri. There is over a foot of space between their thighs.</p><p>Dimitri starts reading. City noise from below fills up all of the empty spaces between the two of them, and Dimitri realizes, his thoughts straying, that this is the first time Felix has been back in his apartment since their first encounter. In his peripheral, Dimitri can see him scrolling through something on his phone. Before he can reorient his thoughts, Felix looks over.</p><p>“What?” He asks, bluntly. Dimitri looks away and doesn’t respond, but continues reading with an awakened need to finish it as soon as possible. </p><p>Fifteen minutes later, Dimitri folds back the last piece of paper and hands it over to Felix. It was a solid read, nearly the exact same as he remembers it being, save for Felix’s grammar and syntax fixes. He doesn’t feel as good about it as he <i>could</i>, but Dimitri is pleased well enough. Felix is talented.</p><p>“You’re seriously done?” Felix asks, taking the papers from Dimitri and slotting them into the folder that Dimitri has never seen him without.</p><p>“I’m a fast reader,” Dimitri says, and then has to bite back a sign. It all feels so—odd, like a sweater you once remember fitting snugly but is suddenly two sizes too large. He has no way to explain the awkwardness between him and Felix: he wishes it were as simple as them not working well together, but Dimitri thinks they <i>do</i>, or could, at least. There is just a wedge between them, one Dimitri isn’t even sure if Felix notices, or minds.</p><p>Felix stands and looks down at Dimitri, once, in an all-encompassing glance. Dimitri supposes he is a bit more put together today than he has been at their previous meetings—he is wearing <i>jeans</i>. Before anything else can be said, Felix is breezing back towards Dimitri’s door. “This makes things easy, then. I’ll keep you updated, but it should likely be published by the end of the week. You know how these things go, I’m assuming.”</p><p>“Is that it?” Dimitri stands, facing Felix with the couch and a hundred-miles wide trench in between them. The distance seems insurmountable from here.</p><p>“Yes,” Felix says, slowly. He blinks, and his dark eyebrows furrow, making him look frustrated. “Is there something—?”</p><p>“Oh,” Dimitri colors at his own naivete. “No, I’m alright. That just seemed so simple.”</p><p>The divot in between Felix’s eyebrows grows deeper. “Were you expecting it to be difficult?” </p><p>Dimitri grimaces but says, “Yes,” nonetheless.</p><p>Felix’s eyebrows suddenly smooth out, in what Dimitri would guess is shock. He is ready to start backtracking and apologizing for the rudeness of his statement, but Felix responds hurriedly: “Sorry to disappoint. I have to go catch that meeting.”</p><p>Dimitri stares at the door long after Felix has closed it behind himself. His Switch lays forgotten on the couch, and Dimitri looks down at it, a bit forlornly. He does not want his relationship with his editor to be so stilted. Dimitri doesn’t even know what he would say if he <i>did</i> have a suggestion for one of Felix’s edits, mainly because he isn’t even sure Felix would stick around long enough to hear it. There is a clear need for communication here; they should have sat down at the very start and laid out their expectations, but clearly they had not, and now they are trying to blindly operate what <i>should</i> be an open and communicative partnership.</p><p>Byleth had truly made it far too easy for him. They had met not long after the funeral, a time when Dimitri had been much more forthcoming with his grief due to the fact that it permeated his skin and followed him like a visible cloud around his head. She had understood from the start. She knew how to pry out of him what she needed to hear, what he needed to say that he hadn’t even known he needed to say. Dimitri knows it is unfair to compare two entirely different people, but it is hard not to.</p><p>He has just gotten far too used to the easiness between him and Byleth. He has settled, again, and has been proven, <i>again</i>, how much of a mistake it is for him to expect such easiness and simplicity in his everyday life.</p><p>Dimitri’s cat, which came down the stairs from where it was likely dozing on his bed, bumps in between his legs, tail curling around Dimiri’s calf. He absentmindedly pats it’s head a few times while he sits back down on his couch. Byleth’ new schedule at her current publishing house is similar enough to her old one that Dimitri knows it should be roughly around her lunch break, so he retrieves his phone and calls her.</p><p>It takes four rings for her to answer. “Dimitri?”</p><p>“I can’t do this,” Dimitri responds, immediately, and frowns to himself. He hadn’t even greeted her back, which is uncharacteristically rude and selfish of him. He rubs a hand against his forehead.</p><p>“Do what?” It’s quiet, wherever she is. Dimitri guesses that she must be sitting in her car. She doesn’t even seem perturbed by his inconsideration. </p><p>“I‘m not sure. Work with Felix. Write.” Dimitri leans back into his couch cushions. “How is the new job?”</p><p>Byleth <i>hmms</i> consideringly. “It’s alright. My coworkers are a bit much, but it’s alright. Why can't you work with Felix?”</p><p>The hems of Dimitri’s sweater are frayed horribly, held together by a few meager threads. He doesn’t even know how long he has had this particular one, but it’s comfortable anyway. He messes with the loose threads while responding. “I knew him in college.”</p><p>“Oh?” Byleth actually sounds interested, which is a feat in and of itself. A part of him had simply assumed that she would have just <i>known</i>, in that odd way she tends to just know things. “Friends?”</p><p>It’s Dimitri’s turn to <i>hmm</i> consideringly. “I wouldn’t call us friends. We had a creative writing class together and worked in peer review groups, so we knew each other.”</p><p>It goes without saying that this was before the accident, before the funeral, when Dimitri still had both of his eyes and no monthly prescription. Not that it matters much, anyways, whether they knew each other before <i>or</i> after. Dimitri supposes that Felix is at least curious about the eyepatch, but he wouldn’t know of any other differences. Nothing physical.</p><p>“Then why is that an issue?” Byleth asks, which makes sense, but Dimitri still struggles with how to put it into words.</p><p>“He was—I don’t know. It really isn’t the issue, it’s just another factor. He’s so… professional about the whole process. We didn’t really talk about <i>anything</i>. I’m not used to it, but I guess it will just take time.”</p><p>Byleth is silent for a second too long. Dimitri instantly knows he has said something wrong, but he can’t tell what. </p><p>“Dimitri,” She starts, which worsens the impending doom he feels weighing down his shoulders. “You know how you operate best. There is nothing wrong with expressing what you need to happen. If he can’t listen to that, then he’s a shit editor.”</p><p>Dimitri wraps a thread around his index finger and tugs. “I know. And he isn’t a bad editor; he’s really very good. But it’s a lot.” </p><p>He can hear Byleth’s mouth open and then close, and it is a few more seconds before she speaks again. “Well. Felix is a big boy, I am sure he can handle it. You <i>are</i> rather easy to figure out, honestly.” </p><p>Dimitri pictures Byleth, sitting in the driver's seat of her Volkswagen, her light hair tosses up into a haphazard bun. The image brings a semblance of order to Dimitri’s jumbled thoughts. “I don’t know if that is a compliment or not.”</p><p>Her shrug is near audible. “Take it as you will.”</p><p>They hang up a few minutes later, after Dimitri prods her to talk about her coworkers and her new workplace. Dimitri puts a little more water in his cat’s dish, and then sets about allotting his pills into his weekly organizer. It’s a bit of a tedious process, mainly because his fingers aren’t quite nimble enough to grasp the slippery capsules and he keeps dropping them, but he eventually manages to get an entire weeks worth situated and put up in his cabinet.</p><p>Dimitri cooks himself dinner that evening, a new recipe from one of the books that Hilda had gotten him, the one in which she had dog-eared all of the specific recipes she wanted him to make for her. It takes much longer than the time it says in the book, and Dimitri can hardly taste anything beyond the pepper he had used anyways, but it was good practice nonetheless. He has never really had a touch for cooking; now, it’s become somewhat of a hobby.</p><p>Later in the evening, Dimitri’s phone <i>dings</i> with a notification. It’s a text from an unsaved number that reads:</p><p>
  <i>PH loved it, said they’ll start printing by tomorrow morning.</i>
</p><p>A new one comes in, right after Dimitri finishes reading the first:</p><p>
  <i>Good job</i>
</p><p>Dimitri rereads the words, twelve in total, a few times. Wondering which of the various sources his number could have come from, he saves Felix’s number, and goes to bed that night trying to replace the anxiety in his gut with a sense of self-accomplishment.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>The gym has been a constant in Dimitri’s weekly routine ever since he was sixteen. It has varied in intensity from year to year, ranging from going once weekly to every day, depending on the current state of his life. After the funeral, Dimitri would change at any given moment from not going for weeks on end to forcing himself through grueling, hours long workouts for multiple days in a row. A therapist he once had, before he moved into the city, called it a form of self-harm, punishment for something that he doesn’t need to be absolved for. Dimitri isn’t sure how true those words are, but he <i>has</i> kept a close eye on how long he allows himself to run on the treadmill for ever since.<p>At any given moment, Dimitri can gauge how well his own mental health is faring by how often he frequents the gym that is a few blocks away from his apartment. It is only his second time there this week, which is good, as far as these things go.</p><p>He’s taken to coming later in the evening, versus the early morning workouts he used to love as a teenager. It’s considerably less crowded, and next to no-one uses the weights, and sometimes, if he’s lucky enough, Dimitri doesn’t even have to use his headphones to block out the noises of the other people there. Tonight is one of those nights: he had seen a woman on the elliptical, and there had been the workers at the check-in desk, but other than that it is empty. </p><p>Dimitri has no solid routine or regimen that he follows; really, he just does whatever he feels like doing, and tries to rotate between which muscle groups he works out every week. He focuses on weight-lifting for an indescribable amount of time, letting the sweat drip from his forehead and soak through his shirt, because he can’t be bothered to pause and wipe it off. </p><p>What he <i>thinks</i> is halfway through his workout, Dimitri has to pull the uppermost half of his hair up, using the lone ponytail holder he has to tie it back. It does little to soothe his overheated-ness, but it keeps the strands from falling into his eyes everytime he looks down, so he leaves it as is.</p><p>Some time later Dimitri moves to the treadmills, just to cool down more than anything. He has built up a steady jog, feet slapping against the belt, when there is a startlingly loud noise behind him.</p><p>Dimitri manages to stop his treadmill and <i>not</i> fall down as he wrenches around to see what it had been. A large metal water-bottle is rolling towards him, a bit dented in the side, and Dimitri has to brace his hands on the handrails so he can turn around further to get a proper look at the figure who he is assuming it belongs to.</p><p>Felix Fraldarius is standing a ways away from the rows of treadmills, dressed in athletic leggings and a sleeveless shirt, his hair pulled back in a tight bun. He and Dimitri make eye contact, and it is, possibly, one of the most excruciatingly awkward moments Dimitri has ever found himself a part of.</p><p>Those seem to follow him.</p><p>Dimitri watches Felix’s eyes as they jerk down his body, moving rapidly from his shoulders, to his knees, down to his tennis shoes and back up again, as if pulled by a string. Dimitri blanches, a little, because the only shorts he’d had that were clean are a pair of old running shorts that come up embarrassingly high on his thighs, and there are quite a number of glass-shard scars there, faded and white but still <i>clearly</i> noticeable. He had been wearing shorts then, too.</p><p>Dimitri, for a lack of anything better to do and a desperate urge to divert Felix’s attention from his skin, steps off of his treadmill and bends to retrieve the water-bottle. His eyepatch is disgustingly sodden with sweat; he can feel the press of it against his cheekbone. </p><p>Felix seems to have taken a half-step back once Dimitri rights himself. He doesn’t move to close any distance between them, choosing to stick his arm out, holding the bottle out far enough that Felix can easily grab it from him.</p><p>Shockingly, Felix speaks before that. “I didn’t know you lived near this gym.”</p><p>That, if Dimitri had been expecting anything, is not what he was expecting Felix to say. Felix has been to his apartment twice now, but Dimitri guesses that isn’t reason enough to localize it in his head. “Yes, just a few blocks away. I didn’t realize you did either.”</p><p>Felix can’t seem to meet Dimitri’s eye, but he settles on his forehead, which is really good enough. “Ah, yeah. Only a three minute walk from here.”</p><p>He doesn’t know what to do with this information. Dimitri smiles, a bit forcedly, even though Felix isn’t even looking at his face. “That’s nice. It’s odd that we haven’t seen each other here before.” </p><p>“I usually come in the morning,” Felix explains. He still has not grabbed his water-bottle, and Dimitri’s arm wavers a bit between them. “I was busy this morning, so…”</p><p>“I see,” Dimitri says. His smile softens into something more genuine, because Felix seems so different here than he has anywhere else Dimitri has seen him. More relaxed, almost. His eyebrows retain their smoothness.</p><p>Felix looks down at the arm Dimitri has extended between them and jolts. He grabs the water-bottle with a clumsiness that makes their hands knock together. “Shit, sorry.”</p><p>“No worries,” Dimitri says. The next few seconds of silence are almost unbearable to get through. </p><p>“So,” Felix starts, and then his face does something interesting. Dimitri would almost call it a grimace. “I didn’t realize you worked out.”</p><p>The expression on his face jumps up several levels in severity the moment he closes his mouth. Felix meets his eye, once, and quickly looks away again. “I don’t mean it like—you aren’t—”</p><p>“No worries,” Dimitri repeats, just to quell Felix’s clumsy ranting if nothing else. He isn’t offended; rather, he’s quite amused. It makes sense, because for all of his height and breadth, Dimitri doesn’t <i>look</i> like much. He raises one eyebrow. “I am not too extreme or serious about it. Just a hobby, really.”</p><p>Felix’s next gaze is a bit more calculative, sweeping Dimitri’s body much more smoothly than the first time. He repeats, “Really.”</p><p>Dimitri doesn’t know what to do with his deadpan tone, or the disbelieving look on his face, so he quickly changes the subject. “You run?”</p><p>It’s just a guess, based off of the leggings and his clean running shoes, but Dimitri seems to have hit the mark when Felix nods.</p><p>“Yeah. They have a nice track on the second floor, so…” Felix trails off and looks at the empty gym around them. Shockingly, he continues speaking. This is the most forthcoming in conversation that Dimitri has ever seen of him. “You always come at this time of night?”</p><p>Dimitri goes to nod, but it had hardly been night when he arrived, so he asks; “What time is it?”</p><p>Felix shoots him a <i>look</i>. Dimitri wishes he could interpret his expressions better; it feels a bit mocking. He doesn’t even pull out his phone when he says, “Around eight-thirty.”</p><p>Three hours. Dimitri has been here for three hours. He has not let go of himself like that in a long time.</p><p>Something must be happening to his face, because Felix raises both of his eyebrows. “What?”</p><p>“Oh, nothing,” Dimitri says, a bit distractedly. He has very abruptly been made aware of the burn in his calves and thighs. He hasn’t even taken a single break for all of the time that he has been here. “I hadn’t realized it was so late.”</p><p>Felix’s eyebrows creep higher towards his hairline. He is about to speak again, his mouth opening in preparation, but Dimitri doesn’t give him a chance to.</p><p>“I’m terribly sorry, but I have to go. My cat needs to be—uh, let out. It was nice seeing you.” </p><p>Dimitri tries not to limp away, but it is a task that requires monumental effort. He had turned and bailed so quickly that he hadn’t given Felix much of a chance to respond. By the time he reaches the doors and looks over his shoulder, Felix has already disappeared.</p><p>The walk back to his apartment is agonizing. Dimitri never bothers to do much stretching before his workouts, and he is feeling the full repercussions of it: with every footstep, fire shoots up his calves and thighs, and he can hardly bear to bend his knees to walk properly. He had to have been running for at least a straight two hours, though it was more likely closer to two and a half hours, and he hadn’t even <i>realized</i> how much time was passing.</p><p>Dimitri’s dissociative episodes tend to come by much the same, without so much as a thought on his part, like slipping on a pair of shoes that fit perfectly. The thought that he may be falling back into one terrifies him in a way that he cannot even fathom.</p><p>When he finally gets back to his apartment, Dimitri immediately goes to the cabinet next to the microwave in his kitchen. He takes out his pill organizer and is pleased to see that today’s slot is empty; he hadn’t unknowingly forgotten to take his pills this morning, which is a good sign. Dimitri has learned that you can never be too cautious or presumptuous with these things, and after a full episode-free year, he absolutely does not want to lose the iron-grip he has kept on himself. </p><p>He spends a few minutes bent over his sink simply breathing in deep enough to fill his stomach before exhaling it slowly and measuredly. There are a number of things he could do, now. He chooses the one with the least effort, takes a quick, cold shower, and climbs directly into bed.</p><p>Panic doesn’t come to him, not yet. Bad days are a part of the process: this is something that every doctor, psychiatrist, and therapist had told him. They will come, but the difference between bad days and episodes are that bad days will disappear by the next sunrise. He keeps that thought nestled in his mind, just behind his eyelids, and attempts sleep.</p><p>It is only when he dangles on the brink that Dimitri realizes: that had been the first time he and Felix had come across each other in a non-work related environment, and they hadn’t even mentioned the novel.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Dimitri has these nightmares, sometimes, that don’t necessarily count as nightmares due to the fact that they are not <i>scary</i>.<p>These dreams, nightmares, usually consist of a few different variables all mashed together in a disarmingly realistic scenario in which Dimitri wakes up from thinking it is real life, his heart pounding a furious beat in his chest. Edelgard is always there, the Edelgard she had been when she died, a year younger than him, her light hair hanging long down her back. His father is there, his step-mother, his only <i>family</i>. Typically they are all doing something painfully mundane: getting ice cream, eating around a dark dining table, walking through a grocery store. Nothing monumental ever happens in them, and nobody ever speaks. There are times that Dimitri wakes from these dreams and feels more unsettled than he would have been if it was a nightmare about the accident itself.</p><p>He can’t quite figure out why his mind treats him so. It’s horribly cruel in the way that it provides him with things that he has lost and can never get back, in a setting that he desires so deeply it leaves him breathless. He likes to think that he treats it well enough: he takes his medication, he stays active, he doesn’t allow the darkness to linger in the recesses, clinging to the corners like it used to. He is <i>trying</i>, and this—waking up from a dream, panting, trembling, cold sweat dripping down his neck, biting the inside of his cheek so hard that he tastes blood—is all that he has to show for it.</p><p>Some nights, it seems worthless to even bother. If he can never fully relieve himself of this guilt, then what is truly the point in taking such strides to lessen the weight?</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Felix actually <i>calls</i> him, considerably early for the both of them, one Friday morning.<p>Dimitri is in the middle of cutting up a bundle of green onions when the ringer goes off. He can just barely see it on the far end of the counter, so when he cranes his neck back and angles his head to account for his blind side and sees Felix’s name on his screen, Dimitri nearly slices into his middle finger.</p><p>He instantly places his knife down and wipes his hands onto his half-apron. For some <i>unknown</i> reason which genuinely frightens him, Dimitri straightens his hair, brushing back some of the strands out of his face before picking up his phone and answering.</p><p>“Hello?”</p><p>“I’m sure you’ve seen already, but the novel is doing numbers,” Felix starts, without so much as a greeting. Dimitri hadn’t actually seen it; he doesn’t usually monitor his sales like that. “Three days out and we’ve already sold about two-thousand copies. People recognize your name.”</p><p>Dimitri looks down at his finely cut green onions. While cooking is still a learning curve, he has all but mastered the art of culinary cutting. “Oh, that’s very—nice.”</p><p>The silence on the other end is practically deafening. Dimitri colors. “That’s good, I mean! That’s really good! I’m sorry. I was a bit preoccupied when you called.”</p><p>“What were you doing?” Felix asks. Though it isn’t <i>unkind</i>, something in his tone is still biting. </p><p>“I was cutting green onions,” Dimitri says. He has no idea why he couldn’t have procured a far more interesting lie. “For a stew. I’m making a stew.”</p><p>Felix makes an odd little <i>hm</i> noise, in which he sounds like he has been made enlightened of something fascinating. Dimitri can’t imagine what. “You cook?”</p><p>Dimitri pauses, trying to determine how to go about answering such a loaded question. Before he can speak again Felix cuts in. “Nevermind, that isn’t the point. It’s doing really well so far, better than any of your other novels have this early on. The publishing house wants to do a press release, and they’ve been talking about arranging a small press conference, just for some publicity. Apparently you haven’t done one before—-they think it’s way past due.”</p><p>“This early on?” Dimitri’s eyes are wide. He hasn’t done one because Byleth never really found it necessary; perhaps she had been pushing back against the publishing house’s requests, or perhaps <i>they</i> have just pushed Felix to encourage it. “It’s been <i>three</i> days.”</p><p>“Yes, but you <i>haven’t done one before</i>,” Felix emphasizes. Now, Dimitri can fully hear the snapping quality of his tone. He must be properly frustrated with Dimitri now. “The press is curious about you.”</p><p>Dimitri grumbles, under his breath enough that Felix couldn’t possibly pick it up through the phone. “I don’t have much of anything to say.”</p><p>There is more silence on the line, but this time, it reads as something a bit more shocked. “Just talk about your <i>book</i>, Dimitri.”</p><p>What is there to possibly say about a book that could not already be found <i>within</i> the said book? Dimitri sighs, as gently as he can manage, and acquiesces. “Alright. What days are they thinking?”</p><p>“Most likely sometime next week. The press release will go out on Monday.” </p><p>Dimitri rubs at his brow bone, eyes closed in defeat. There really is no way to get around this, and it isn’t even Felix’s fault. The publishing house would have done this sooner or later; Felix is just the unlucky one that got stuck having to coach Dimitri through the process.</p><p>“I’ve never done this before,” Dimitri admits. He wants to keep Felix’s expectations as low as he can.</p><p>“I know. We literally just talked about that.” Felix doesn’t sound worried about the situation, only annoyed with Dimitri, which isn’t much of anything new. He often is. He and Dimitri have met up a handful of times now, at coffee shops or lunch places or, once, at Dimitri’s apartment. They’ve grown a tiny bit closer, if you could even call it that, but Dimitri <i>has</i> learned a few key aspects of Felix’s personality. Dimitri doesn’t mind it, really, because he doesn’t think that Felix genuinely means it most of the time.</p><p>“Okay,” Dimitri says. He assumes that Felix knows this means he must help Dimitri; perhaps that is why he is so irritated. Dimitri smiles a bit abstractedly at the thought.</p><p>“Okay,” Felix parrots. He drops his voice a few octaves in mimicry of Dimitri—and it’s quite realistic. There are a few seconds of silence. Dimitri debates bidding Felix an awkward farewell when Felix switches the topic, so abruptly that Dimitri blinks.</p><p>“What kind of stew are you making?”</p><p>Dimitri looks at the ingredients strewn about his kitchen. Only a few have made it into the stockpot on the oven thus far. It has been quite a task that has taken up most of his morning, and will extend well into his afternoon <i>and</i> evening, he suspects. “Beef stew. It’s rather plain, but…” </p><p>He trails off, mainly because he doesn’t know what to say afterwards. <i>But I’m not very good, so it’s difficult nonetheless?</i> <i>But I can’t taste it anyways, so it doesn’t matter?</i></p><p>Felix picks the conversation back up, ungracefully as always. “Well. That’s—cool. I had no idea you cooked.”</p><p>“I’ve only recently started learning. It’s somewhat of a necessity when you live alone.”</p><p>Dimitri has no idea where, how, or with who Felix lives. He’s had no reason to ask or find out, but now, he feels the curiosity niggling at his brain. </p><p>There’s a rustle on the other side of the line. “What do you like to make?”</p><p>Dimitri considers the question. He wonders why Felix cares; considers that maybe Felix is just trying to make small talk, but he has never done that before. Doesn’t matter either way, Dimitri supposes, and answers. “Desserts are certainly fun to make. They’re easier than any kind of meal, that’s for sure.”</p><p>“No, I mean—what do you like to eat? Like, what do you like to make to <i>eat</i>?”</p><p>Well. There’s no avoiding it now. “Actually, I—I can’t taste anything. I don’t really know what I like.”</p><p>“What?” Felix’s reaction is immediate, like people’s often are. He sounds truly shocked at the thought, speaking with the same vigor that he does when he is berating Dimitri for something inconsequential. “You can’t taste <i>anything</i>? At all?”</p><p>Dimitri struggles a bit with how to answer. He wants to word it in a way that won’t give too much away; this isn’t a conversation, or a topic, that he’d like to delve into over the phone. “I used to be able to. I lost my sense of taste a few years ago. I don’t really remember much of what I used to enjoy eating. If something is spicy enough, I can taste that.”</p><p>“Why do you cook, then?” Felix asks. Dimitri is relieved he hadn’t asked the usual <i>how</i>, though he hadn’t exactly expected Felix would. He has a surprising amount of tact when dealing with what are clearly personal subjects.</p><p>“I enjoy the process.” Dimitri admits. “And a friend gave me a cookbook, so I have been working my way through that. It’s satisfying.”</p><p>The man on the other line seems to take this in stride. He doesn’t so much as falter, nor does he dance around the fact that it is odd Dimitri can’t taste. “Huh. Good to know, I guess.”</p><p>Dimitri huffs out a laugh. “Sure, I guess.”</p><p>They end the call a few moments later, once they’ve solidified some details about the press conference, and once Dimitri officially gives Felix the go-ahead. The anxiety in Dimitri’s chest is worth it, he tells himself, at the relieved quality of Felix’s voice. </p><p>He continues cooking his stew, though admittedly much more distracted than he was previously. He had been right when he assumed it would take him well into the evening: it is not finished until the sun has begun to set, casting the apartment in burnt oranges and warmth. Dimitri can smell the headiness of it; somehow, his sense of smell had not gone with his taste. The doctors had no solid explanation for it other than the fact that trauma and severe depression can pick and choose what it decides to take from you. Dimitri remembers laughing, when they had said that.</p><p>He eats it regardless, and takes the smoothness on his tongue and the heat in his throat as a sign of it’s quality. He doesn’t know what to do with the amount it has made, so he packages some in to-go containers and decides he will make his rounds to his friends tomorrow, just to free up some space in his fridge, if nothing else.</p><p>Felix texts him later that night. He wants to meet up with Dimitri sometime after the press release and before the conference, to smooth everything out and practice answering questions. He suggests they meet at one of the inner city parks, rather than his usual lunch spot.</p><p>Dimitri doesn’t exactly know what caused the change, but he can guess. He responds with more enthusiasm than usual, and Felix simply likes his message in response. Dimitri takes it as a sign of progress.</p><p>The next few days pass as planned: the press release goes out on Monday, which garners more sales, the numbers jumping before Dimitri and Felix’s eyes. Come Monday afternoon they are sitting in Felix’s office: it is Dimitri’s first time there, and it is exactly the same that Byleth’s had been. It is not so much an office as it is a walled off cubicle, with barely enough room for Felix’s expensive looking rolling chair and the leather armchair he has shoved into the corner, where Dimitri sits. He has windows, though, where Byleth had not, and the natural lighting is glorious and alights Felix’s hair in navy blues. Dimitri watches him navigate his desk, a sprawling, tiered thing with so many supplies on it that it looks as though Felix has raided an Office Depot. They all look thoroughly used, as well, which amuses Dimitri.</p><p>His computer is large, and his desk is messier than Dimitri had anticipated it would be. He has multiple plants and each of them are apparently thriving and a luscious green. Though it is a cubicle, Felix has managed to snag one in one of the building’s corners, so his doorway--which is just an unwalled section--faces the bare hallways rather than another worker. It’s nice, moderately quiet, comfortable if not a bit cramped.</p><p>Dimitri doesn’t quite know why he’s here. Or, rather, he doesn’t know why he stayed. It’s custom for authors and editors to monitor a press release together, but it had been hours ago, and Felix has seemingly delved back into whatever work it is that he does on a daily basis and forgotten that Dimitri was still squished into the leather armchair behind him. Dimitri watches as Felix clicks from tab to tab, types in short, sporadic bursts, wheels from one side of his long desk to the other, fiddles with paperclips, with highlighters, twirls a pencil between his long fingers. It’s all very exciting--Dimitri had no idea that Felix stayed so busy. He had mistakenly assumed that Felix’s workload directly correlated with Dimitri’s, and whatever Dimitri was putting out.</p><p>Well. He <i>had</i> just released his fourth novel. Dimitri stirs a bit in the armchair, his thighs solidly pressing against the arms, and it squeaks beneath him. Felix jumps.</p><p>He whips his chair around quickly, stilling the pencil between his fingers. His eyes, amber in the direct sunlight, are wide. </p><p>“<i>Fuck</i>,” Felix says upon seeing Dimitri. “I forgot you were there.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Dimitri says, though he has no reason to apologize. Felix appears to reach the same conclusion and scowls.</p><p>“Why were you being so quiet?”</p><p>He asks as though he is <i>suspicious</i> of Dimitri, like his quietness is a thing to be <i>suspicious</i> of. Dimitri is baffled, and he doesn’t bother trying to hide it. “You looked busy. What did you expect me to do? Jumping jacks? A musical performance?”</p><p>Felix’s scowl only grows sharper at Dimitri’s sarcastic suggestions. “You’re just—so weird. Were you even breathing? Gods, look at you. You barely even fit in that damn chair.” Felix turns back around, only halfway, and closes something on his computer. “Let’s go.”</p><p>“Go where?” Dimitri wrenches himself from the chair. “Are you finished?”</p><p>“Clearly,” Felix retorts. He breezes out of his office without so much as a backward glance. “It’s my lunch. I’m starving.”</p><p>Dimitri, despite how much he tries not to, fumbles in his step a little. He wants to ask for clarification, but he can imagine how Felix would react, and would likely take the offer off the table entirely. He is inviting Dimitri to join him on his only break of the workday--Dimitri must treat it with the respect it deserves.</p><p>They come across Ashe on their way out of the building, who works in the publishing house’s contract department. He has changed little since Dimitri has seen him last, many months ago as it was. His freckled face alights in a smile at the sight of them.</p><p>“Dimitri! Felix! Garreg Mach’s new dynamic duo, in the flesh!” </p><p>Felix’s cringe is full-bodied. Dimitri smiles at the tagline, a bit endeared by Ashe’s unchangingly sunny nature, and greets him in turn. “It’s good to see you, Ashe.”</p><p>“It’s good to see <i>you</i>, Dimitri,” Ashe punches him lightly in the bicep. Dimitri doesn’t so much as flinch, and Ashe’s fist bounces off, retreating back to his side. “I was worried we’d never see you around here again after Byleth left. We all miss you.”</p><p>Dimitri misses them, too, all of Byleth’s (and, in a sense, his own) old coworkers who he had built steady friendships with over his and Byleth’s time together. Ashe continues speaking. “When Felix came along, we were all so excited--it’s not often we get some fresh meat around here. Certainly not someone as good as him!”</p><p>Covertly, Dimitri glances at Felix. There is color high on his cheekbones. “Shut up, Ashe. I’m not <i>fresh meat</i>.”</p><p>Ashe laughs, completely undeterred. “Sure you aren’t. You were so tense when you first started here. Didn’t talk to <i>anyone</i>, but I see you eating with Annette nowadays, you know. And Dimitri here; well, I didn’t think he’d ever work with anyone but Byleth! I’m amazed. I guess the two of you just softened eachother up, huh?”</p><p>Horrifyingly, Dimitri and Felix make eye contact the second the words are out of Ashe’s mouth. It burns, like Dimitri has just stared right up at the sun, and they both yank their eyes away equally as fast. He attempts to soften the peculiar blow the statement seems to have had. “I don’t know about that, Ashe. I think Felix was plenty soft on his own.”</p><p>Nobody speaks. Nobody even moves, or blinks, it seems to Dimitri, who lets his mouth remain open. He hadn’t—that wasn’t—</p><p>Even Ashe seems shocked by the statement, though in a decidedly more amused way than Felix, who is, somehow, glaring at him with wide eyes.</p><p>“I didn’t mean—” Dimitri starts.</p><p>“<i>Dimitri</i>,” Felix cuts in. It is withering.</p><p>“Dimitri!” Ashe yelps, his laughter finally spilling over, boisterous and hearty. It is Dimitri’s turn to color, and he can feel it burning a path up his cheeks, straight under his eyepatch and up towards his hairline.</p><p>He fiddes with the tie of his eyepatch on the back of his head, tugging at it embarrassedly. His ponytail is pathetically loose. “I only meant that Felix was already <i>agreeable</i> on his own. I had nothing to do with it.”</p><p>Felix’s eyes are still burning twin holes straight through the side of his face, so Dimitri focuses on Ashe, whose laughing has subsided into incredulously raised eyebrows and a hand cocked on his hip. This is worse, Dimitri thinks, because it appears to be sympathetic in a way.</p><p>“Nothing to do with it, you say—?” Ashe begins. Felix, again, stops the rest of the sentence short.</p><p>“Shut up. Shut up now. I will kill you and dump your body off of the roof if you finish that sentence.” </p><p>Ashe rolls his eyes. “You know it’s my job to write up contracts, right? Someday I’m going to get you for all of these homicidal threats.” Then, to Dimitri, “It’s seriously an issue. I would think he’s a serial killer, if only he was organized enough to be one.”</p><p>Dimitri flounders. He can no longer feel the weight of Felix’s eyes, which is a relief, but Ashe’s gaze is nearly as heavy. Dimitri flounders some more. “Felix is not a serial killer.”</p><p>“<i>Obviously not</i>. I wouldn’t even have the time to be now that I’ve got <i>you</i>,” Felix sneers, though it doesn’t seem to have it’s desired effect when Ashe’s smile goes up a couple hundred kilowatts. Dimitri winces.</p><p>“We should get going,” He offers. “Your lunch is only so long.”</p><p>Ashe looks as though he is about to speak, his expression even more enthusiastic at Dimitri’s words, but Felix stalks off, cutting directly in between Dimitri and Ashe’s bodies. They watch him go through the glass doors and then stop directly outside of them. It takes Dimitri a second too long for him to realize that Felix is waiting for him.</p><p>“<i>Lunch?</i>” Ashe asks, at the same exact time Dimitri says, “Goodbye, Ashe. I’ll see you soon.”</p><p>They are locked at an impasse for a moment. Ashe, mercifully, breaks it by craning his arm up to clap a palm on Dimitri’s shoulder with a slight chuckle. “You better.”</p><p>When Dimitri steps into the sunlight, eye squinting against the brightness, Felix kicks up from where he was leaned against the wall and stalks to stand next to him. His head just barely makes it to Dimitri’s chin level, so Dimitri has to look downwards at him when he speaks.</p><p>“I forgot that you and your old editor were so—” Felix cuts himself off and waves a hand roughly in the air. </p><p>“Close?” Dimitri supplies. Felix gives a sharp nod, and Dimitri smiles down at him. Felix turns away. “Yes, we were, and still are. I was a frequent here.”</p><p>When no acknowledgement of his words comes, and Felix <i>actually</i> starts walking away, Dimitri follows after him. He matches Felix’s stride quickly and asks, “Where do you want to go?”</p><p>“I don’t care,” Felix’s voice is gruff, and he walks with purpose, his head angled downwards as if he plans to bulldoze straight through the crowds. “I’m just starving. I’d eat a horse right now.”</p><p>Before Dimitri can hold his tongue the words come out, entirely unbidden and with a shocked blush. “I still have quite a bit of that stew left, if you want to try it.”</p><p>Felix appears to be just as shocked as Dimitri himself, which only serves to worsen the blush on his face. It’s not that he <i>hadn’t</i> wanted to offer, but he surely hadn’t been planning on it, and it is obvious that Felix wasn’t expecting—</p><p>“Um, sure,” Felix blurts. It is a little too loud, given their proximity and the volume they were speaking at before. He blinks. “Is it any good?”</p><p>He realizes his mistake the second he asks, his eyebrows pulling down and his mouth flapping. Dimitri holds out his hands reassuringly. “My friends said so. I think they can be trusted with these things.”</p><p>It’s true—Claude had given him a <i>hug</i> for it and Dedue had thoroughly complimented Dimitri’s cooking abilities. He thinks that those two solid reactions are to be trusted. </p><p>“Okay.” Felix shrugs. “I’ll tell you the truth, just in case they were lying.”</p><p>Dimitri knows this. It is one of the things he appreciates the most about Felix, because he is unflinchingly honest, bordering on blunt, where none of Dimitri’s other friends are. It is refreshing, but Dimitri doesn’t know how to say this in any honest way, so he just smiles.</p><p>The short walk back to his apartment is spent in silence. Dimitri greets the doorman when they come across him at the entry. The elevator ride up to the 12th floor is spent in the same silence as the duration of the walk: something comfortable and easy. Dimitri does not fumble the keys once they reach his door—the one that he and Dedue had painstakingly painted a dark green—which he considers a success.</p><p>It feels odd, considering this is only the second time that Felix has come through Dimitri’s invite, and it is to eat <i>lunch</i>. He cannot bring himself to look at Felix as they walk into the kitchen, for whatever reason. He throws his keys onto the counter, and Felix helps himself to a seat at the bar. Dimitri takes the stew from the fridge and sets a pot on the stove, because Dedue had suggested that reheating it on the stovetop would taste better than through the microwave. It will take at least thirty minutes for the thick stew to be adequately warm. Dimitri blanches, and finally turns to face Felix.</p><p>Felix—who is watching him with his arms crossed across his chest, leaned against the back of the barstool. He is frank in his staring, though he does blink when Dimitri looks at him, and raises his eyebrows.</p><p><i>What?</i> Dimitri almost asks. <i>What is it?</i> He can’t imagine that directly addressing Felix’s staring would go over well, so instead he says, “How long is your lunch?”</p><p>“Technically an hour, but I can make an hour and a half before Hanneman starts getting pissy.” Felix’s eyes flicker towards the pot on the stove, then to the dark cabinets next to Dimitri’s head, <i>then</i> to the fridge; an erratic pattern without rhyme or reason. “Why?”</p><p>“This may take a little while to heat up,” Dimitri shrugs gently and leans back against the counter next to the stovetop. He crosses his own arms, and then he and Felix settle into silence.</p><p>Their eyes look at anything but each other, flitting around the space their bodies take up. Dimitri drums his fingers on his forearms and waits for Felix to speak. It is a futile wish, because the other man seems even more content to sit in the silence than Dimitri himself is. He is looking around the apartment, though he surely must know the interior of it very well by now. The thirty minutes it takes for the stew to reheat passes quickly, and when Dimitri spoons some into a bowl for Felix and places it in front of him, he takes an expectant step back and clasps his hands in front of him.</p><p>“Go on,” Dimitri encourages, nodding down at the steaming bowl and looking at Felix.</p><p>Felix picks up his spoon and quirks an eyebrow. “Don’t be weird about it.”</p><p>He lifts a spoonful to his mouth and eats, without much fanfare at all. Dimitri watches aptly for a reaction as Felix eats spoonful after spoonful, but his face does not change. He seems to get irritated after a while, because he drops the spoon down into the bowl and fixes Dimitri with a glare.</p><p>“What? I said don’t be weird about it. Why aren’t you eating?” </p><p>“I’m not hungry,” Dimitri waves a hand. It must be good, because Felix continues to eat, so Dimitri steps away contentedly and puts away the few remaining dishes he has drying on the rack. He busies himself with finding things to do around the kitchen while Felix eats.</p><p>It is a while before Felix speaks again. Dimitri is scrubbing out the pot in the sink right in front of him, the sleeves of his sweater pushed up to his forearms to avoid the soapy water. He almost does not hear Felix’s voice over the faucet, but he projects it just loudly enough.</p><p>“It was good,” Felix says. When Dimitri looks up at him, Felix is looking resolutely down at his empty bowl. “Honest.”</p><p>Dimitri can’t help the smile that spreads up from his chest and onto his face like a sickness, overtaking his features. He can feel the strain of it in his cheeks, his eyebrows rubbing against the fabric of his eyepatch as they tilt upwards. He barely has half a mind to turn the faucet off. For some reason, one simple compliment from Felix has been enough to render Dimitri stupid.</p><p>“Thank you, Felix.” Dimitri’s voice is a bit more bright than it typically is; even he can hear it. Felix flushes. Dimitri can only tell because all they have between them is the bar, and Dimitri’s sink. </p><p>“There you go again,” Is Felix’s vague response. “It’s just beef stew. Anyone could make it.”</p><p>Dimitri lifts one shoulder and tilts his head slightly. “Yes, I’m sure. But you said <i>mine</i> was good.”</p><p>“Yes, well.”</p><p>Dimitri continues to look at him for a few seconds under the assumption that Felix will continue speaking. When he doesn’t, and Dimitri has just been staring at him for a good minute, he reaches forward to grab Felix’s bowl and averts his eyes.</p><p>“I don’t want to keep you any longer. You looked pretty busy.” Dimitri turns the water back on to finish rinsing the dishes. He can hear Felix’s scoff loud and clear, this time. </p><p>“You certainly don’t make it easy,” Felix scoots out of his barstool and pushes it back in carefully. Dimitri doesn’t know how to interpret the words, because Felix could have meant a number of things by that statement. Dimitri rises from the open dishwasher and pulls it closed, wiping off his damp hands before turning to Felix.</p><p>“I enjoyed this,” Dimitri says, open-faced, because he feels that it is something that should be said. He truly had enjoyed it; Felix’s company has become something that Dimitri has grown to enjoy, and sometimes even crave. It’s not that he ever <i>disliked</i> the man’s company, but, at a certain point, it had been a bit more stress-inducing. Their relatively new partnership still has many things that need to be ironed out—things that need to be discussed, as well—but for now, Dimitri is content. Happy, even.</p><p>Felix looks like he has been knocked off kilter. He blinks, and his mouth opens instinctively, but it snaps closed before any actual words come out. Dimitri almost takes this as <i>disagreement</i>, but the pink in Felix’s cheeks suggests otherwise. Small, and to himself, Dimitri smiles.</p><p>“Yeah,” Felix eventually manages. He rights his ponytail and adjusts the neck of his turtleneck, hooking a finger in it and tugging down slightly. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”</p><p>Ah, Wednesday. Their planned park endeavor. Dimitri had almost managed to put the press conference out of his mind for a moment there, but.</p><p>“Yes,” Dimitri forces out. “Wednesday.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Wednesday comes as goes the same as many of their more formal and work-related meetings. They talk about the press release and the amount of attention it has amassed for the novel. Felix tells him how the press conference will go down; the bare details, the questions that he’ll be asked and the types of responses he should give. It’s good practice, Dimitri knows this, but it still makes him frown.<p>If Felix notices his trepidation, he doesn’t comment on it. They spent the entire afternoon walking throughout the park, spending perhaps a bit more time than is really necessary just so they can make the most of the nice weather. Eventually they part ways: Felix has to return back to work (he’s already gone an hour too long out of the office, he says) and Dimitri—well. Dimitri has to prepare himself for the press conference.</p><p>The rest of the week passes by. Dimitri sleeps as much as he can manage. He goes to the gym, where he has not seen Felix again since their encounter there. He rereads a bit of his own novel, just for extra precautionary measures. He practices answering questions in the mirror, and does his hair up in a variety of up-do’s just to examine how they change his face and make it less harsh. He painstakingly picks out an outfit: not too formal, not too casual, just quirky enough that it shows some personality.</p><p>Dimitri sleeps well on Friday night. The sun rises, and it is Saturday, and the press conference, of course, goes to absolute and utter shit.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>i dont actually know a whole bunch about the authorial writing &amp; editing process, so this is the result of some bare bones research and my own conjecture</p><p>on twitter @kandacult if u wanna talk ^__*</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. chapter two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW!!!! there is a pretty bad mental breakdown that lasts for aboutttt 50% of this chapter. there are mentions of suicidal ideation &amp; self-harm (nothing explicit), dissociation/disassociative episodes, depression, and some cruel things are said by living AND non-living people. take it as you will, and take care.</p><p>there are also mentions of a very bad car accident (nothing graphic about the accident ITSELF, but still worth mentioning). this chapter is just pretty heavy and dimitri's mental health takes a turn so please keep this in mind if it is something you especially struggle with.</p><p>also i'd like to say, i have no idea how press conferences work (or if authors even actually have them? lol) so if you by some chance have been to a press conference please just look away from the inaccuracies!!!!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It starts, as do most of the more awful things in Dimitri’s life, with a car.</p><p>He hadn’t really known why he was expecting anything different. It’s not as though he thought he would be able to walk to the venue, but he was hoping, at the very least, that they would allow him to take the subway. When the car pulls up to the curb right in front of Dimitri’s apartment at 11 A.M. sharp, he, again, feels silly for ever assuming that anything in his life would ever be easy. </p><p>Saturday morning had been as peaceful as it could be. Dimitri made coffee in the sanctuary of his apartment, opened all of the windows while he shaved and got dressed and affixed the eyepatch around his head. He paced a bit, unavoidably, but beyond that he had refused to allow his nerves to overtake him, like they very well could.</p><p>Dimitri was capable of this; he has survived far worse. He could get through a press conference. He could answer their questions in a respectable, likable manner. He could talk about his book—he <i>wrote</i> it, for Gods’ sake. This is the very least he could do.</p><p>But as soon as Dimitri had stepped out from beneath the overhang and seen the black Sedan there, waiting for him with Felix visible through the window of the backseat, those thoughts flew from Dimitri’s mind like frightened birds: quickly, and without a glance back.</p><p>He desperately tries to remember what he had repeated to himself like a mantra all morning, yet the words are not coming to him whatsoever. Dimitri feels like he has been hit over the head with how shocked the sight of the car renders him. It’s not as though he has completely managed to avoid cars since the accident—that would be impossible—and he <i>has</i> learned how hard he has to clench his fingernails into the meat of his palm to make the nausea disappear, but he is already worked up over the press conference itself, so this—</p><p>Hanneman rolls down the passenger side window. He leans forward over the center console and raises his thick eyebrows at Dimitri, high over the rim of his glasses. He is the head editor at Garreg Mach; essentially Dimitri’s and Felix’s boss, though Dimitri himself doesn’t see much of the man. Hasn’t seen him for a few months, in fact. His hair is much more saturated with gray than Dimitri remembers.</p><p>“Are you alright?” Hanneman asks. Dimitri thinks that he must know vaguely of Dimitri’s circumstances, in some way or another, because he began working with Garreg Mach not long after the accident. Dimitri himself has never said anything—Byleth is the only person he has ever told, outright, about what has happened. His other friends know because they attended the funeral, and they all knew Dimitri’s family beforehand. He has made it four years without having to relive the experience with people he meets; he plans on keeping it that way, if at all possible. </p><p>But with the way Hanneman is looking at him, somewhat consideringly, Dimitri wonders if word had still gotten around in the end. Or, perhaps Dimitri is simply imagining the pitying look in the man’s eye; his own mind and conjectures are not something he readily trusts more often than not.</p><p>Dimitri has learned how to steel himself through car rides, whether they be three hours (the time it takes to drive to visit Dedue’s parents, a tradition he has upheld every Christmas since his own died, though Dedue always takes over the wheel) or ten minutes (when he wants to visit Hilda but doesn’t feel like walking to her obnoxiously out-of-the-way brownstone, one city over). He still avoids it by whatever means necessary, but he has gotten <i>better</i>, which must count for something. He will not let all of his efforts go to waste over the prospect of getting into a car driven by a man he hardly knows for all of the ten minutes it will take them to get to their destination.</p><p>He inhales deeply enough for his shoulders to rise with it, and steps towards the car. He doesn’t even consider sitting in the passenger seat, though it is empty, and Felix likely relocated to the back seat for that purpose. That is too much of a leap even for Dimitri: he may be able to ride in cars, and drive them if he needs, but he would prefer to not see the road moving beneath them at all if he can help it. So; he opens the door to the backseat, and greets Felix’s open, surprised face.</p><p>“Uh—” Felix begins. He had been flipping through a compact, leather notebook, still held open by his thumb in the crack of the pages. He looks professional this morning, and more put together than Dimitri himself. Though he has chosen his most crisp white button-down, and his best fitting pair of black trousers (a bit tight, admittedly, he seems to have outgrown them), Felix still manages to look more suitable in his customary turtleneck and long navy coat.</p><p>Dimitri sighs. “Hello, Felix.”</p><p>Felix blinks at him. His hair is in a ponytail, though the shorter strands have fallen loose, and they frame his face nicely. He looks startled. Dimitri slides into the backseat without looking at him again and closes the car door as softly as he can manage.</p><p>“Good morning, Dimitri.” Hanneman looks at him in the rearview mirror, and Dimitri attempts a smile, though he can feel how wobbly it is on his face.</p><p>“Good morning, Hanneman,” Dimitri inclines his head slightly. He’s always liked the man, as distant as he may seem. He has always been cordial with Dimitri; something he appreciates, and always strives to return.</p><p>“Are you excited?” Hanneman asks, a jovial twist to his lips. Dimitri does not trust himself to respond in a way that would do anything other than give way to his nerves, so he simply chuckles. It comes out shakily enough for Felix to look at him, head turning in Dimitri’s peripheral, but he does not meet his gaze.</p><p>Hanneman, Dimitri notes with abundant relief, is a cautious driver. He is smooth, takes his turns very lightly, and Dimitri only has to run through his memorized breathing practices once the entire ride. He keeps his hands clenched, something of a necessity, but other than that, it’s—it’s not awful. Felix spends most of it reading something in his small notebook, or jotting something down with a pen he procures from his pocket. Dimitri would usually bother to ask <i>what</i>, but he would rather focus on maintaining the level of calm he has kept up. He will take any semblances of peace he can get at a time like this.</p><p>He looks to Dimitri a few times. Never outright; Dimitri can only see his eyes sliding over towards him, righting themselves quickly, but it’s enough to make Dimitri feel unsettled. He is sure Felix can sense the nerves radiating from his entire person; he’s practically a live-wire, barely contained energy buzzing through him. Dimitri increases the pressure of his fingernails on his palm and exhales steadily through his nose.</p><p>They arrive at the venue in one piece, and Dimitri would like to show a bit more restraint, but he cannot help but be the first out of the car. It can be written off easily enough as excitement, so he doesn’t worry too much about what that movement will tell Felix or Hanneman. The building itself is nondescript, as is the inside, and they move through a series of corridors before passing a slightly larger room with double doors. Dimitri, mistakenly, takes a glance at the small window-panes in the double doors.</p><p>It must be the press conference room. There are barely less than a dozen journalists sitting around in padded folding chairs, each balancing notebooks and briefcases, chatting amongst each other. There is a longer table just in front of them, and there is a singular water bottle placed on it. Dimitri can spot one camera in the back of the room, behind the journalists, before he is whisked away by his own moving feet.</p><p>The familiar anxiety in his chest, twisting about his lungs and pressing down into his stomach, increases tenfold. He thinks of everything Felix has told him the past few days, everything he has researched and practiced in the mirror. Dimitri doesn’t have stage fright—has never minded speaking in front of crowds—but this is <i>unpredictable</i>. The journalists could ask anything they so please, and Dimitri will have to answer on the spot. He knows himself, and he knows just how much of a disaster this can all turn out to be. He isn’t even sure that he fully understands why a press conference for a novel is necessary, and when he had tried to voice the confusion to Felix, he was met with a blank stare. Dimitri, not for the first time, wishes he hadn’t agreed to this. Surely Garreg Mach would not have pushed that hard.</p><p>“Hey,” Felix says, in what he probably thinks is a stealthy manner by the way he casts his voice low. Dimitri jolts. “Chill. You’re making <i>me</i> fidgety.”</p><p>Frowning, “Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize my nerves were so apparent.”</p><p>Felix quirks an eyebrow at him, frustratingly sharp, as usual. “Are you serious? The second you stepped out of your building you looked like a deer caught in headlights. Come on,”</p><p>Dimitri doesn’t know what he is supposed to be coming to; probably the silliness of his own statement, as is clearly realized by Felix. He fiddles with the edge of his eyepatch, tugging it down a bit more securely over his eye. </p><p>Felix looks at him even harder. “Seriously. Relax. This thing will take, like, fifteen minutes max. They just want some good quote-drops, a solid picture or two.”</p><p>Though he would never voice this, the words do nothing to calm Dimitri. He wilts. Before Felix can give him any other shaky advice, Hanneman stops at a door just down from the double doors of the press conference room and all but shoves Dimitri and Felix in. </p><p>“You have about five minutes to prepare yourselves. Felix, you and I will be in the back the entire time, monitoring the recordings and the questions. Not expected to be a long one, today, so don’t worry. You will do stunningly, Mr. Blaiddyd.”</p><p>The room that Hanneman leaves them in looks like a storage-closet with a settee shoved into it. There are water-bottles here, too, an entire folding table full of them. The shock of this is strong enough to momentarily take Dimitri’s mind off of the impending doom awaiting him behind those double doors; he huffs out a laugh, and looks at Felix.</p><p>“How thirsty did they expect us to be?”</p><p>Even Felix looks amused, both of his eyebrows raised and a modest curl to his lips. He doesn’t say anything in response, but that’s fine to Dimitri, who sits on the settee with his legs stretched in front of him. He looks down at his shoes, knocks them together once and lets them fall back apart, all before Felix speaks.</p><p>“Hanneman was right, you know.”</p><p>Dimitri lifts his head to Felix, who has decided to remain standing near the folding table. His coat, which reaches the back of his knees, has a long strand of hair on the shoulder. Dimitri focuses on this as he responds. “I know. I'm not worried about how long I will be here, moreso the fact that I will be here at all.”</p><p>Felix furrows his eyebrows at this. His head rears back very slightly, a movement that would be near unnoticeable were Dimitri not looking at him, but the door swings open before anything else can be said.</p><p>“Gentlemen,” is all Hanneman says. Dimitri has no idea why he left them to their own devices in the room, since it appears he has stood outside of the door the entire five minutes. </p><p>Dimitri’s stomach continuously rises up his throat and swoops back down to his feet as they approach the double doors. Hanneman and Felix walk shoulder-to-shoulder a step ahead of him, and Dimitri focuses on the lines of their shoulders, even as the doors open and the chatter from inside of the room marginally quiets.</p><p>He goes to take a seat behind the centermost table. In an instant, Felix and Hanneman have made their way to the back wall. They stand to the right of the sole camera-man. Dimitri takes one glance at them, anchoring himself with the familiarity of their faces, and attempts a glance over the journalists.</p><p>A simple headcount proves him right—there are ten journalists before him. He cannot make out any of their generalized features; he doesn’t allow his eyes to linger for that long, but he thinks they must seem nice enough, because he can see a few of them sitting up straighter in their seats, a few bright smiles aimed his way. Dimitri manages to pin his gaze on a middle, empty seat in the crowd, and waits for his introduction.</p><p>It comes from a man, to Dimitri’s left, with light hair and a checkered button-down. He holds a spiral notebook, and he maintains eye contact with Dimitri as he speaks. “Dimitri Blaiddyd, it’s certainly a pleasure. You are one of the best rising young authors in this part of the country, though I am sure you are well aware of that.”</p><p>Again; not exactly. Dimitri hasn’t made it on any bestsellers list—his second novel had nearly breached the number of sales required by the first week, but they had fallen a couple hundred short. He thinks his most recent could be the one to breakthrough, but he hadn’t wanted to needlessly get his hopes up, so Dimitri tried not to think about it too much. </p><p>The man continues without a response. “I’m with the <i>New York Post</i>, and I just have a few questions about your writing process. As we are all aware, you are a very talented author, and your four novels so far have all been of different genres. I have to know: how do you do it? Are there any specific rituals or practices you partake in in order to get into that headspace, or does it just come naturally to you?”</p><p>Dimitri knows how to answer this one off the top of his head, because it is simple, and honest. “Ah, thank you. And as for my writing process, there isn’t anything really special about it. If I’m having trouble with a certain scene, sometimes I will resort to basic writing exercises learned in university, or I will consult my editor, but beyond that it is mostly natural to me.”</p><p>Being able to speak without so much as a stutter seems to take a great deal of pressure off Dimitri’s chest. Now that his voice has been unleashed into the room, and it has not wavered, or trembled, or cracked like he thought it would, Dimitri feels emboldened to get through the next handful of questions with that exact amount of poise and conciseness.</p><p>The same man from the <i>Post</i> asks him a few more similar questions. If he listens hard enough, and focuses well on his answer, Dimitri can pretend to not notice the trembling of his veins. He just has to get through this, and then the publishing house will likely not ask much of him for a good while, and that thought alone is enough to make Dimitri be even more forthcoming in his answers.</p><p>In between journalists, Dimitri shoots a quick glance to the two men standing post at the back. Hanneman gives him an easy, close-mouthed smile, and Felix, arms crossed on his chest, meets his gaze and tilts his chin up, smoothly, before lowering it again. Whether it is meant to be a gesture of acknowledgement, encouragement, or both, Dimitri can’t be sure, but he tucks it away and turns his eyes to the next journalist anyways.</p><p>It is a woman, this time, young enough to be close to his own age. She says she is from the <i>Daily News</i>, and she has questions about Dimitri’s novels themselves; an abundance of them, it seems. She asks about how he comes up with the plots, the characters, the twists and the endings. He struggles here, because these are not answers that can be so clearly given as the previous ones were. He doesn’t want to say <i>they just come to me</i>, even though that is the truth. Dimitri attempts to bring together an answer that is both eloquent and well-informed, and it seems that he has done an adequate job when she nods enthusiastically and writes something in the notebook balanced on her knees.</p><p>The next few minutes, and rounds of questions, go by easily enough that Dimitri is lulled into a false sense of security. Later, he will look back and think that it was completely naive and foolish of him to let his guard down so completely as he did, but now:</p><p>“Dimitri! Your answers have all been so thoughtful this afternoon, but there has been one I’ve been particularly dying to ask that hasn’t come up yet. Your eyepatch—as far as I know, nobody knows where it came from, or what’s underneath it. If you wouldn’t mind sharing—?”</p><p>“What?” Dimitri interrupts the man. The words come unbidden, but he wouldn’t care to stop them even if he had a chance. He takes note of the man’s beard, and the cardigan he is wearing, but he can’t see much else past his own shock.</p><p>“Ah, apologies,” The man says, his smile effusing forced sincerity. “I guess what I mean to say is—how’d the eyepatch come to be? Some cool story there?”</p><p>Distantly, in his peripheral, Dimitri sees movement. When he drags his eyes a scant few inches upwards to see what it is, there is Felix, cutting his hand across his neck viciously in a manner that translates as ‘<i>stop</i>’. His movements are sharp and jerky, and Dimitri can’t tell who they are directed to. He looks back down to the man.</p><p>His face is expectant. He is actively awaiting an answer to his asinine question. Dimitri’s blood boils.</p><p>“I hardly see how that is an appropriate question,” Dimitri forces out. He holds his voice as firm as he can, and thinks he manages well enough, the words seeping out through barely clenched teeth.</p><p>The man subdues a bit beneath the words, but his brazenness seems to inspire other journalists. Another one, from some indiscernible point in the room, pipes up.</p><p>“I have to admit, I’ve been curious about that as well, Mr. Blaiddyd. I don’t mean to be inappropriate, or invade your privacy, but you’ve got to admit—the eyepatch gives you such an air of mystery, everyone can’t help but be curious!”</p><p>Dimitri’s temper, his hotheadedness that comes out once in a blue moon and that he inherited from his mother, flares like the sun. He draws his hands back from the table, places them in his lap, and speaks.</p><p>“Well, since you are so curious, should I take it off now and show you all the gore beneath? The hollow of the eye that I had cut out? The scars, as disgusting as they are? Would you all like to see?”</p><p>The silence that follows is absolute. Even Felix has stopped his desperate movements, and when Dimitri manages to look at him, he is staring right back at Dimitri with his mouth parted. Next to him, Hanneman’s eyes are wide.</p><p>Dimitri looks away first.</p><p>He could feel the burn of his words as they scraped out of his throat, but he cannot find it in himself to regret them. He hadn’t been able to place the journalist who had the gall to ask such a question, especially now that they all look equally mortified, but it does not matter to him to put a face to it: his anger alone is burning well enough to sustain him.</p><p>Dimitri has never experienced such acts of outright disrespect as this. Sure, he has caught people staring, but nobody—<i>nobody</i> has ever outright asked. It should be a given, he thought it <i>was</i> a given, that if he doesn’t offer up the information then it isn’t anyone's right to know. Clearly, he had assumed wrong.</p><p>Focusing on the burn he feels on his face, hot like a fever, Dimitri keeps his eyes on the table and curls his fingers into his palm. He breathes, in and out, until it doesn’t feel as impossible to get them through. It takes a long while for anyone to speak again; the voice is as deafening as a gunshot, and Dimitri flinches.</p><p>“Is it true, then?” One of the journalists asks. Their voice is meek, like it’s a question they don’t want to ask. But, they do anyway. “You lost it in the car accident? The same accident you lost your family to, including your older sister—Edelgard, I believe? I remember hearing about it on the news because I lived in the area. It was truly horrific, I didn’t even know anyone survived. I’m so sorry.”</p><p>Dimitri cannot see anything for a moment. He wonders, briefly, if he has passed out from the sudden rush of blood to his head—and then he realizes he has clenched his good eye closed. A steady murmur arises from the crowd. He hears a chair squeak back, someone standing, but he knows it is not his own because his knees would not be steady enough to hold him upright. Dimitri—Dimitri—Dimitri—</p><p>“Enough,” Hanneman’s voice is raised, in a tone Dimitri has rarely heard it in, enough to project over the crowd. It does little; people are furiously scribbling, now. Dimitri can hear the scratch of their pens on the paper with a sickening clarity. He presses a closed fist to his mouth just to keep the words in, caustic and <i>vile</i>, but he drops it a moment later when the sting of them is too overwhelming to bear.</p><p>“Who in the—who do you think you are? To ask me that?” Dimitri’s words shake, as do his shoulders, and his thighs, in a way that makes him feel lightheaded and empty. Wispy as a cloud, about to float away. He shudders. “How do you even know her name? How? Why would you <i>say</i>—don’t you ever—I should—”</p><p>Dimitri has to place both palms, now clammy with sweat, on the table to steady himself. He is so angered, so <i>hurt</i>, that he can’t string together a proper sentence. “Don’t ever say her name again. Do not speak of my family again. I should have you—fired, all of you. I swear it. You do not deserve your title as a journalist. <i>None</i> of you do, if you think that is an acceptable thing to just—ask. I came here to talk about my <i>novel</i>.”</p><p>His voice cracks on the last word. A small, nearly unheard yet ever-changing voice in his brain, that he has not heard in quite some time, tells him, <i>you are being just as senseless.</i> <i>You are taking it too far.</i> <i>Calm down.</i> </p><p>
  <i>If you can hardly defend us to a bunch of second-rate journalists, then you may as well have died with the rest of us.</i>
</p><p>He jerks in his chair and then it really does go sideways beneath him, knocking down to the ground with a noise loud enough to seemingly startle everyone in the room. He cannot make out any faces; can barely see the distinct lines of bodies. His eye is clouded and wet, though his cheeks remain dry. Dimitri shakes, for he has not heard his family's voices in <i>so long</i>, and he is almost relieved to remember the exact intonation of his mother’s barbed words.</p><p>The idea makes him abruptly nauseous as soon as it comes; the tiny, rational part of his brain revolting at his own thoughts. He was taught to know better than to listen to them. He <i>practiced</i> for days on end; ignoring them, not giving in to their demands, admitting that they are not real. But now:</p><p>He needs to get out of here before he does something he truly will regret, because he has not reached that point yet. The journalist deserved to be reminded of their insolence, their <i>cruelty</i>, and Dimitri will not deny himself the satisfaction of handing it to them. </p><p>There is a clamor of movement amongst the small crowd. The camera has been dismantled from it’s tripod. Dimitri’s shirt feels stifling—he yanks it from where it was tucked into his trousers with an urgency that trumps his usual gracefulness, nearly tearing into the fabric itself. He has, at some point, knocked down the water bottle. It must have been open, because water spills over the table and onto the ground. Drops of it land on his shoes, and Dimitri thinks of them as tears; perhaps his own, perhaps his father’s, or his mother’s, or Edelg—</p><p>Dimitri tears out of the room so quickly that the blur of movement dizzies him. He hardly knows the layout of this building, or where he is going, but he moves through hallway after hallway until he has become secluded enough that not even the voices in his mind can be heard. He has silenced his family. Dimitri weeps.</p><p>One year. One full year was all he managed, and the mere mention of the accident, of his family, of his <i>sister</i>, was enough to send him tumbling straight back down the mountainside. He can see himself, his body, battered and useless, lying in the deep, dark crevices that lie below. He should leave it to rot—to return to the Earth, for all the good it does him. </p><p>He has always known that he shouldn’t have been the one to survive. He does not deserve the mantle of being the last living Blaiddyd, nor does he want it. Dimitri has never been able to bear the weight of it on his head, no matter how well he faked it for all these years. He cannot do this. He never could.</p><p>He can see it now; how <i>fake</i> it all was, this past year of ‘peace’ and relative silence. He had been living on borrowed time. This—the shaking, his turning stomach, the tears—was inevitable. It always is, when it’s all you know how to do right.</p><p>Dimitri presses back into the fall so forcefully that it knocks a bit of the breath from his lungs. His eye, the empty one, aches hollowly. He wants to laugh at himself for thinking that any of this could have been simply forgotten. It is who he is, at his very core: a weak, trembling mess. His mother was right in telling him that he should have di—</p><p>“Dimitri.”</p><p>He looks up so quickly that the movement hurts his neck. There is a man standing a good amount of feet away from him at the head of the hallway. He is pale, and his hair is long, and he looks angry—angry at <i>Dimitri</i>, who pulls back at the realization.</p><p>“What the <i>hell</i> was that back there? Are you a—a child? What kind of reaction was that? Seriously, I—” He tugs a hand through the top of his hair and it disrupts his ponytail. His cheeks are a burning red. “Do you even understand the fallout that this will have?”</p><p>Dimitri glares at the man, on the sole purpose that he is looking at Dimitri like that; so expectant with his eyebrows drawn down harshly above his eyes. Dimitri drags his hand roughly against his face, so roughly that his skin pulls with it, until it comes away dry. He doesn’t respond, and he has no idea how much time passes before the man speaks again.</p><p>He sounds much, much more different, though Dimitri doesn’t exactly know what the difference is. “What’s wrong with you?”</p><p>“Leave,” Dimitri says, audible enough to atleast be heard. “Leave me alone.”</p><p>A few more blessed seconds of silence before that voice, tugging at some part of Dimitri’s muddled mind, interrupts it. “Dimitri.”</p><p>The calling of his name causes him to raise his head again, something about that <i>voice</i>, and when Dimitri looks he sees—Felix.</p><p>This only serves to worsen the situation, if the startling pounding in his chest is anything to go by. Dimitri steps away from the wall and looks at Felix, who is here in the hallway, his hair coming loose from it’s ponytail, his small notebook nowhere to be found.</p><p>Dimitri has to bite back a gag, then, because he remembers just moments ago when he had hardly even recognized the man. His throat flexes with the effort, and Felix’s eyes lock onto the movement while his eyebrows furrow even deeper. He takes a hesitant step forward, close enough to reach out and place a hand on Dimitri’s bicep, so gently that the touch is barely there.</p><p>Still; Dimitri moves away from Felix with a shock. He snarls, something low and deep in his throat, and Felix’s eyes widen enough for Dimitri to hate himself a bit. Out of every possible person that could be here at this moment, Felix is the last that Dimitri would have wanted to witness this. He is completely blindsided.</p><p>After a few considering looks during which Dimitri avoids eye contact, Felix tries a different approach. He holds up his hands, palms out and open like he is soothing a spooked animal that is about to pounce. A declawed lion.</p><p>“Hey, big guy,” Felix starts. His voice is unwavering and sounds as it always does, piercing through the haze in Dimitri’s mind like a lance. Dimitri’s breath shakes out of his chest. His stomach tightens and loosens in rapid succession, and he feels feverish, like someone has put a flame to his face. Felix continues speaking steadily. “Snap out of it. You know where you are, don’t you?”</p><p>He looks at Felix sharply, pushing the loose hair back from his forehead to do so. It’s a question that he has been asked before, though he can’t seem to remember the circumstances in which: likely something similar to know, when he really <i>doesn’t</i> know where he is, not in a conscious sense. Not when all he can do is focus on not throwing up, and on keeping the voices at bay the best he can.</p><p>Felix doesn’t look scared. He doesn’t even necessarily look worried. His eyebrows are knit tightly, the divot in between them deep, and his jaw is clenched tight enough for the muscle to jump. Felix looks—</p><p>He looks—</p><p>Disgusted, Dimitri’s mind supplies. Stricken, like Dimitri has slapped him across the face.</p><p>And then, instantaneously and with little warning, Dimitri can't breathe. His chest heaves with the amount of air he is trying to suck in, but none if it is going to his head, which pounds and feels as though it is going to fall from his shoulders. He can’t look at Felix anymore—can’t stand the sight of him—and when Dimitri’s hands fly up to his eyepatch, his good eye immediately snaps shut. He brutally digs his fingers into the hollow there, feeling the pain from years ago ghosting across his skull, and the sharpness of it brings him some clarity. His hands claw at the fabric of his eyepatch, trying to drag it down from his face with a sense of desperation that is entirely crazed.</p><p>Felix steps up before him, suddenly. Dimitri had somewhat forgotten about him; when Felix’s cool hands encircle Dimitri’s wrists with a vice grip, Dimitri jumps hard enough to jostle them both. Felix tugs Dimitri’s hands towards himself and painstakingly uncurls each of his fingers until they are straight enough for Felix to press them against his own chest. There is a fine tremble running through Dimitri’s body. A fault line. Felix’s heartbeat pounds against his palms.</p><p>“<i>Dimitri</i>.” Felix snaps. There is no softness in his voice; if anything he has raised it, speaking loudly enough that Dimitri flinches, the words like a punch to the gut in the scant space between them. Felix doesn’t pause. “Dimitri, snap the fuck out of it. You’re going to hurt yourself.”</p><p><i>I already have</i>, the voice that is not Dimitri’s own sneers, the words banging around in his head. <i>That is all I know how to do</i>. </p><p>Felix seems to have come to his senses about Dimitri: he holds his wrists so tightly that Dimitri would have to actually try and break free, which he will not do in fear of truly harming Felix, who is staring at Dimitri with such an intensity that he shrinks beneath the weight of it. Now that his focus has been forcefully switched to the man in front of him, and he cannot use his hands for anything other than holding on, the breaths come of their own accord, his heartbeat settling into tandem with Felix’s own.</p><p>Dimitri stumbles forward a bit, and it is only Felix’s hold on his wrists that stops him from falling. They make an odd sight: Dimitri, risen to his full height with his arms outstretched and his palms pressed against Felix’s chest, who seems to be staring at the hollow of Dimitri’s throat. It is nearly eye level. Dimitri is shaking, but Felix is steady, as he so often is. He <i>squeezes</i>, and Dimitri actually feels the ache of it in his wrists, his joints grinding together.</p><p>That, if nothing else, is what finally gets him to speak.</p><p>“Felix,” Dimitri gasps, tries to speak, but his voice comes out on the wrong side of ragged. He has to try again. “Felix.”</p><p>“Yeah,” is all Felix says in response, easy and without pause. It almost sounds like a confirmation, to a question Dimitri wasn't sure he was asking. He looks at Dimitri for a hard, tense moment before speaking again. There is an unhappy twist to his lips. “Yeah, Dimitri?”</p><p>He has to force the bile back down his throat in order to respond. “I’m—“</p><p>“<i>Don’t</i>,” Felix seethes. He is often frustrated with Dimitri’s ceaseless attempts to apologize; this time, it feels genuine. Dimitri can feel the shame of it like a brand.</p><p>The heartbeat under Dimitri’s palms seems to gradually slow down now that the moment has subsided. Dimitri curls his fingers slightly into the fabric of Felix’s turtleneck, clawing in, and when he takes a small step forward Felix releases his wrists just enough to allow Dimitri’s arms to bend between them so that he can come closer.</p><p>This shouldn’t have happened. Felix didn’t need to do this—he shouldn’t have, <i>absolutely</i> should not have. He is only Dimitri’s <i>editor</i>. They have known each other for all of a month and a half. They are just barely becoming friends, and now they have crossed some unspeakable line that Dimitri doesn’t even know if he can come back from. Felix shouldn’t have done this, because now he will know this unavoidable part of Dimitri, the darkness that he can never shed no matter how hard he tries.</p><p>Dimitri tells him that he should not have. He looks at his own hands, large and long-fingered, contrasting the black of Felix’s sweater. Felix digs his fingernails into the bare skin of Dimitri’s forearms, where he has shoved his sleeves up; they bite.</p><p>“What the fuck does that mean? Did you expect me to just leave you back here like that?” His head jerks in what Dimitri assumes is a gesture to the empty hallway they are in. </p><p>Dimitri is so, so tired. He barely manages a nod with how heavy his head feels. Words are still hard to come by, right now, and they scrape the bottom of his throat, but he manages. “You should have, Felix. I would’ve been alright. I have been—before.”</p><p>This seems to have been the wrong thing to say; Felix’s expression darkens considerably. He struggles for a long moment, his eyes tracing over Dimitri’s face with an anger he does not even attempt to conceal.</p><p>“Alright. You would’ve been <i>alright</i>. I can’t—you were trying to—Dimitri. You weren’t even breathing.”</p><p>“I would’ve been alright,” Dimitri repeats. He has pulled himself back from such breakdowns before. “You should have left while you had a chance.”</p><p>“As if I don’t have a chance right now?”</p><p>He looks at Felix, managing to move his eyes up from his own hands. He supposes that is true; Felix could still leave, could still walk away and not look back and act like he hadn’t seen any of that. But it wouldn’t change the fact that he had seen it, and now he will <i>always</i> see it when he looks at Dimitri. Nothing will change that.</p><p>“I would understand if you left after this. I promise, I would not blame you for it.”</p><p>It’s an easy out, and by all means Felix should take it. Instead, it causes Felix to drop Dimitri’s forearms entirely. He takes a wide step back, putting so much space in between them that Dimitri no longer has to bend his neck to look down at him. He cannot parse Felix’s expression, nor his words.</p><p>“Fuck you for even saying that. This is a <i>partnership</i>. I have no idea what kind of idiotic preconceived notions you have about me, but I’m taking a chance on you just as much as you’re taking a chance on me, and the odds—Jesus. You’re my first author. I’m not going to leave you over one panic attack. What the fuck is that?” Felix’s hands are gesticulating wildly, and Dimitri, who is growing more and more weary by the second, has never seen Felix so frantic.</p><p><i>One panic attack.</i> Dimitri swallows.</p><p>“That wasn’t a—“</p><p>“Are you kidding me? Are you actually being serious?” Felix looks downright murderous, and Dimitri doesn’t know how to bear the full extent of his anger, so he looks away. “I can’t believe you. My brother—my brother was a <i>veteran</i>, you jackass. I fucking know what a panic attack looks like. I’m not an idiot. Fuck.”</p><p>The last part—Felix has (had?) a <i>brother</i>?—seems to be forced out of him by some unseeable presence, the words stuttering their way out of his mouth and his eyes blinking rapidly. Dimitri has brought his gaze back to Felix’s face, of course, though Felix is now the one who averts his own.</p><p>Dimitri has the urge to apologize again; but this time, it is for a genuine reason, and he has to think hard about how to phrase it. The silence stretches between them.</p><p>“I am sorry,” Dimitri says, honest and quiet. “Felix. I am sorry for that.”</p><p>Felix, thankfully, seems to understand just what Dimitri is apologizing for; his own assumptions, and how they have hurt Felix. Dimitri closes his eye, but this time it is for the comfort that the darkness will bring.</p><p>“There is—“ Dimitri begins. He has to stop and start again. “This will change…things. You must know that.”</p><p>Felix looks at him bewilderedly. “What even is <i>this</i>?”</p><p>He has to bite back a laugh. Felix is right—what even is <i>this</i>? Dimitri’s inability to be a normal person? One year of his hard work down the drain after a mere mention of the accident? The accident itself, which Felix hasn’t even asked about yet? </p><p>Dimitri has no idea how to answer that question, so he does not. He knows Felix is expecting something, anything, from him, but Dimitri would not be able to bring himself to say anything but the truth about this, and he can’t do that just yet. Not now; not when he feels like he can’t discern which thoughts are really his own.</p><p>When he looks back to Felix, Felix is looking away. He is staring at Dimitri’s shoes. “I’ll deal with the press and Hanneman. I won’t let them—“</p><p>He breaks off, face twisting into fury for a split second before he schools it back into straightness. Dimitri watches. Something has passed in between them, but he cannot tell what. He feels Felix’s anger and cannot place where it comes from.</p><p>“Thank you, Felix. For—all of this.” Dimitri’s words are halting. He wants to go home. “I am sorry.”</p><p>Felix doesn’t look at him once he finally walks away. Dimitri turns from his retreating figure and, again, closes his eye.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Dimitri briefly considers calling someone when he finally makes it back to his apartment. He left the venue out of some back door of the building and called for an Uber, and forced himself to sit through the entire car ride with his eye open and on the window. <i>A form of self-harm</i>, the therapist with curly red hair and dark eyes would say. <i>Punishment for something he doesn’t need to be absolved of.</i> He had never been very good at listening to her.<p>For some reason, Claude is the first that comes to mind. He has known Dimitri since they were freshmen in college, roommates in their tiny shoebox of a dorm who continued to live together throughout the next four years of their schooling. Claude is how Dimitri met Hilda; the pair had always been side by side. She had been helping Claude move into their dorm that first day. </p><p>Claude is a good friend. He drove four hours from campus to the hospital where Dimitri was placed right after the accident, because all of Dimitri’s emergency contacts were dead and the nurses had to resort to the next best thing. Claude had come immediately, as had Dedue, and Ingrid, and, shockingly to Dimitri at the time, Hilda. But Claude had gotten there first. Dimitri still remembers his expression when he walked into the hospital room.</p><p>However; they never really talk about any of the things that had happened afterwards. Not Dimitri’s first psychotic break four months after the accident, not when Dimitri had to be hospitalized, not when Dimitri had to go on antipsychotics, not when Dimitri spent an entire half of a year going between psychiatrists and therapists. The only thing that got him through getting his bachelor’s was a mix of medication and weekly therapist appointments, though Dimitri does not remember his last year of college, and only bits and pieces of the graduation ceremony.</p><p>(One psychiatrist had told him that he’d always been this way, probably should have been on medication as soon as he turned eighteen just to even out some of the chemical imbalance early on. They said the accident was the match that lit the fuse, though really, it could have been anything.</p><p>Dimitri hadn’t believed them. He can’t remember an instance of <i>ever</i> feeling so miserable before the accident. Ever.)</p><p>So, the point is: Dimitri cannot call Claude. Claude knows all of this, of course, just as he knows how well Dimitri had been doing the past year. He had made it a point to keep his friends updated after they had gotten onto him about it one too many times before. But Dimitri cannot call Claude and bombard him with the day’s events; he cannot call any of his friends, really, because he cannot expect them to constantly pick up his pieces that only become more and more shattered each time they fall.</p><p>Dimitri decides that the night should be his own problem to deal with. It <i>is</i>, regardless of whether or not he lets anybody in on it. It is hardly past noon, so Dimitri cannot let himself sleep just yet because then he will be up half of the night, which will not do him any good. That is if he even manages to sleep tonight, which would be a feat on it’s own.</p><p>His cat is there the moment that he closes the door. It weaves in between his legs, stepping on his feet and pushing its head into his calves. Dimitri wonders if the animal can taste his grief in the air; he wonders if it is salty, in the same way that he tastes it on his lips.</p><p>He sinks to the floor with his back against the door to stabilize him, his hand petting down the slope of the cats back. The repetitive motions soothe him long enough that he stays there for an hour, hand going back and forth, his mind staying blessedly quiet. Dimitri doesn’t think about what he will do next.</p><p>Once his back begins to ache against the door, Dimitri forces himself to stand. His knees ache with the pressure. Dimitri forces himself all of the way across his apartment and to the open staircase, which he slowly climbs, gripping onto the rail. </p><p>Methodically, he strips his clothes and showers. Dimitri lets the hot water fall over his face for a long moment, the warmth easing some of the soreness of his scarred eye from where he had been pressing and pulling at the wound. His entire body feels weak, like every ounce of energy has been sapped away, replaced with weights heavy as lead. He wants to sink into the floor and let the water wash him away, but he cannot do that, because his cat, at the very least, must be fed. Dimitri latches onto this thought to get him through the rest of his actions.  </p><p>He doesn’t bother drying himself off before dressing in whatever clothes he pulls from his dresser. They stick to his skin uncomfortably, but Dimitri pays them no mind. He also figures he should eat something, as it has been hours since he last did and his stomach aches with the emptiness, but he can only focus on one thing at a time: putting food into his cat’s bowl.</p><p>Once it is all said and done and Dimitri finds himself downstairs once again, seated on his couch with his legs folded beneath him, he compiles a list.</p><p> </p>
<ol>
<li>He has showered, which, above all, is a win. Though Dimitri would never tell anyone this (it still horrifies <i>him</i> to think about), there had been certain points in time where he would go weeks without doing so. Nowadays, he must take every victory he gets in what is a never-ending war.</li>
<li>He has fed his cat.</li>
<li>He has been outside today, albeit for roundabout reasons.</li>
<li>He has changed clothes.</li>
<li>He <i>has</i> eaten, at least once, today.</li>
</ol><p> </p><p>Five things. It is all he needs to think of: five <i>good</i> things that he has done. Dimitri isn’t sure if it does much to soothe him, at least not presently; perhaps some distant part of his brain will recognize this for what it is and relieve him, a bit. It is one of the techniques that the same curly, red-haired therapist taught him. He has a splitting headache, because crying—now matter how much or how little—always gives him one. He certainly has not drank enough water today, something Ingrid would insist he do so until two full water bottles are empty, but Dimitri—</p><p>Is so very tired. He doesn’t know how many more times he can do this, because picking up the pieces after each breakdown leaves his fingers more and more bloody than the last. He tries to imagine a future in which this is not such a quintessential part of his existence, and he fails. The despair is the only thing that he knows, in and out, from every corner and every angle, in every darkness.</p><p>The voices have long since abandoned him. He uses their appearance and subsequent longevity as a measure for how awful things are: this time, there is still redemption for him yet. They had only stuck around for the worst of it, and then disappeared back into the deepest recesses of his mind once he pulled himself from their grasp. </p><p>Again—a small victory, though it is hard to recognize it as such.</p><p>He thinks of Felix, a few moments later, after he had been staring at the grains of his wooden floors for a while. The thought feels just as numb as the rest of him and is quickly discarded into the void, but he still thinks of Felix and his multitude of expressions towards Dimitri’s undoing anyways. It is a harrowing thought, and <i>that</i> feeling is what stays with him, though diluted and distant as it may be. </p><p>Dimitri knows that no amount of ruminating or self-berating will do anything; not tonight. Perhaps there is room for that tomorrow, when the day is new and not so weighed down by the faceless journalists' words and his own mistakes. He manages to find sleep once it is nearing 3 P.M., far too early for a rationally-minded person to shut their eyes for the night, but—Dimitri has never been called such. He sleeps, and somehow stays that way.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>The following morning Dimitri wakes up, on his own, at 6 A.M., which really just leaves him with too much time in the day, so he takes his meds, sits on his couch, and watches the sun rise. Since winter is nearing this does not happen for nearly an hour, and he sits and watches the light pour into his apartment and uncover all of the dark spaces. He can’t tell if he feels any better from the previous day, but his <i>body</i> is certainly in better shape, so Dimitri makes use of that.<p>He can’t stomach the thought of a full breakfast, so Dimitri eats a somewhat overripe banana while standing over his sink, and then he takes his medication. Afterwards, because he misses his friend and knows, in some way, that he likely shouldn’t be alone for an entire day even if it just means speaking to another person, Dimitri calls Dedue.</p><p>“Hello,” Dedue answers quickly. Dimitri is momentarily shocked; he had forgotten that Dedue has woken up before the sunrise for as long as Dimitri has known him. </p><p>“Hello, Dedue,” Dimitri responds quickly enough. He lingers in his kitchen, uncertain, feeling foolishly embarrassed at the hesitance in his own home.</p><p>“How are you?” Dedue asks. It is a formality with him, but the words still draw Dimitri up short. He can only hope that his delayed response is not noted.</p><p>“I am well.” The lie burns straight through Dimitri’s teeth, but he pulls it off well enough. “How are you?”</p><p>“Dimitri,” Is all Dedue has to say for Dimitri to <i>know</i>, that he has irrevocably messed up. He really, truly had not wanted to drag Dedue into any of this. He has dirtied his hands with Dimitri’s issues far too many times, and now Dimitri cannot even pull off having a successful conversation with his friend. </p><p>“Ah, Dedue,” Dimitri begins, though even he can hear how weak it sounds. “I’ve just remembered that I have an important phone call with the publishing house at 8:30. I’m afraid I have to go.”</p><p>“It is hardly 7:30, Dimitri,” Dedue responds. He is quiet for a bit, in which Dimitri has no more excuses to give. “What happened?”</p><p>“Nothing happened.” Dimitri insists. “Can I not just call my good friend to talk? Catch up, maybe?”</p><p>“You can. And you do, often.” Dedue reminds him, and Dimitri wants to palm his own forehead for his own slip. Dedue likely has it all figured out by now; he has always been able to read Dimitri exceedingly well. “As a matter of fact, I happen to be in your neighborhood. I was buying groceries. Would it be alright if I stopped by? Just to say hello and catch up, with a good friend?”</p><p>He has phrased it in a way that would inevitably make Dimitri feel guilty for denying, so he gives in, and silently curses Dedue in his head for knowing him so well and sticking his hands out for Dimitri, time and time again.</p><p>It’s not as though Dimitri does not want or appreciate the help; he just wishes that it weren’t such a burden on the people around him. That <i>he</i> weren’t such a burden. Dimitri just takes up so much space, in every sense—physically and mentally. His issues are so rampant that they spread to the people closest to him, like a contagion. It makes him feel ill.</p><p>Within ten minutes there is a sturdy knock on his door. It gives Dimitri reason to move from his kitchen, so he goes to it quickly, receiving Dedue with the most balanced smile he can give. Dedue has an armful of paper grocery bags, and Dimitri ushers him in and closes the door.</p><p>“You could have taken your groceries home,” Dimitri comments, eyeing the few bags. Dedue does not live too far from here, and Dimitri, once again, feels the anger curling in his heart for his inability to leave his friends to their own busy lives.</p><p>“No worry,” Dedue waves him off without so much as a glance, busying himself with unloading the bags straight onto Dimitri’s countertop. “Most of it will be fine. Besides, I was thinking I could make you breakfast.”</p><p>Dimitri frowns. “I only have eggs.”</p><p>He had used most of his remaining vegetables in the beef stew he made. Dedue seems to have prepared; he pulls out a bundle of green onions, a few hearty looking tomatoes and various bell peppers. Dimitri watches as vegetable after vegetable is pulled from the bag, and he startles, slightly, when Dedue speaks.</p><p>“I wish these could have been fresh from my garden. They would’ve been much better.”</p><p>“What? Dedue, you can’t seriously—”</p><p>“Shush,” Dedue says, lightheartedly, but Dimitri does so nonetheless. It is useless to try and combat Dedue’s generosity; something that Dimitri, no matter how many years he spends by the man's side, will never get used to. He figures he could try arguing about it a bit more, but Dimitri is still tired despite the truly inane amount of sleep he had gotten, so he just settles against the kitchen counter and closes his eye.</p><p>“Go sit,” Dedue urges him, nudging his shoulder lightly. When Dimitri looks at him, he catches Dedue in the midst of eyeing Dimitri’s outfit. “It’s been a while since you have worn that.”</p><p>Dimitri, who has not even looked in a mirror—or down at himself, for that matter—in the past twelve hours, glances down at his outfit. He’s wearing a shirt from his college, something of a deep green color with the white lettering across the chest, and nondescript sweatpants. He has his eyepatch on, as well, one of his spare ones that is white instead of his usual black, solely because he had not been able to place his black one this morning. All in all, it is not a very divulging outfit. He looks back up to Dedue.</p><p>“It’s a comfortable shirt,” Dimitri blurts. This, at least, is true.</p><p>Dedue smiles a bit at him and repeats himself. “Go sit, you’re in the way. This will be done soon.”</p><p>He takes a seat at his kitchen counter and simply watches Dedue, because there is nothing for him to say, and he is sure Dedue would prefer to do his work in silence. He moves about Dimitri’s kitchen as if it were his own, knowing exactly where to get what, producing utensils and ingredients with ease. The bustle of him is enough for Dimitri to zone out on, his eye going unfocused on the dark red of Dedue’s sweater. </p><p>The press conference nearly breaches the tentative peace he has settled into, but he holds it back for as long as he can. It has not even been a full twenty-four hours. He will give himself that much, if nothing else.</p><p>Soon enough, the aroma of spices and herbs fills Dimitri’s apartment. Dedue grabs two plates and places full omelettes on them, and when one gets set in front of Dimitri, he eyes it with apprehension.</p><p>“Eat.” Dedue says, giving Dimitri a fork for emphasis. “You always do that.”</p><p>“Do what?” Dimitri asks while he grabs the fork, using it to poke at the omelette. Dedue has truly stuffed it with various vegetables; it is the largest omelette Dimitri has ever seen.</p><p>“You don’t eat whenever something has happened.” Then, as if reminded of something, Dedue returns to Dimitri’s cabinets and pulls out his pill organizer. He glances over it quickly and shoves it back in. “Good.”</p><p>“Really, nothing has happened,” Dimitri will say this as many times as he needs for Dedue to understand. Someone asking about the accident, about his family, no matter how crudely done is not an <i>incident</i>. Dimitri’s reaction is much the same: they are both things he needs to work on. Considerably.</p><p>“Don’t offend me with that, Dimitri.” Dedue shoots him a look under his heavy eyebrows and cuts into his own omelette. He stays standing across from Dimitri. “I know you.”</p><p>“Yes,” Dimitri looks down at his plate, sheepish. “I suppose you do.”</p><p>He successfully eats half of the omelette, which should really count as its own entire meal with how large it is. Dedue doesn’t try to start any conversation, which isn’t unlike him, so Dimitri doesn’t worry too much. When he offers to take care of the dishes, Dedue allows him, stepping away from the sink so that Dimitri can work.</p><p>They move around each other in silence, with a comfort that is inherent from their decade long friendship. Once all of the dishes have been washed and the ingredients returned to their rightful places, Dimitri turns around at the sink to face Dedue, leaning back against it.</p><p>He scrambles for small talk, which is so unlike his normal self that it makes him feel slightly dizzy. “How have you been, truly?”</p><p>Dedue crosses his arms and regards Dimitri. “I’ve been fine. Work has not been too busy—there are not many needs for bouquets in the winter time, not before Christmas comes, at least. Have you heard the news about Ingrid?”</p><p>Dimitri furrows his eyebrows, because he has heard no news of Ingrid. “No, what is it?”</p><p>“Ah,” Dedue smiles fondly. “I believe her and Dorothea are moving in together.”</p><p>Dorothea, Ingrid’s girlfriend of three years, was something that nobody in their friend group expected—Ingrid least of all. They had met at a coffee shop, an offhand meeting where they exchanged pleasantries and parted ways, but when they had run into each other there the very next morning they had decided to exchange numbers, and things took off from there. Dimitri has met her multiple times; a lovely person, really, and someone totally fitting for his friend. His heart warms at the thought. “That’s wonderful.”</p><p>“It is,” Dedue agrees, nodding his head. He momentarily looks lost in thought. “But how are you, Dimitri?”</p><p>Dimitri bites down on the inside of his cheek. He doesn’t know how to answer, because he really doesn’t know how he is. Having Dedue here has allowed him to ignore the issue altogether, but he hadn’t really felt much of anything earlier this morning. How does he go about saying that?</p><p>Dedue only tolerates his silence for so long. “You know, all I have ever wanted was for you to reach out when you need help. That is all I have ever wanted of you, Dimitri. You allow yourself to suffer in silence for far too long, and then—”</p><p>“Dedue,” Dimitri cuts him off, because he can sense where it is headed. “This is nothing of that sort, I promise you. I will tell you that I am not at my best right now, but it has not been <i>long</i>. I only—yesterday. It was… yesterday.”</p><p>It is as close to admission as he will get. Dedue looks at him with an unfamiliar light in his eyes. </p><p>“That’s alright,” Dedue says. “That is alright. Do you want to talk about it?”</p><p>Dimitri looks down at his bare, pale feet. “It was just a press conference. Garreg Mach finally insisted on one, and one of the journalists there asked me about—the accident. About my family. I—”</p><p>Dimitri can’t finish that sentence, but he trusts that Dedue will fill in the gaps. </p><p>“I understand.” Dedue responds. Dimitri breathes. “Were you alone?”</p><p>This—he cannot stop it—makes Dimitri shiver a bit. “No. My editor was there. He, um—he helped me, I guess you could say.”</p><p>“Your editor?” Dedue asks, eyebrows rising high. “The new one?”</p><p>Dimitri just nods, and Dedue makes a noise in the back of his throat, something shocked. “That’s interesting. Does he know, then?”</p><p>“No,” Dimitri frowns. “I haven’t told him anything. He heard the questions, though, so I am assuming—”</p><p>“Enough of that,” Dedue clicks his tongue lightly, stopping Dimitri. “It is no use to assume anything. You should speak with him.”</p><p>Dedue is always so painfully <i>right</i> that it makes Dimitri ache. He knows he should, after what Felix had seen and heard, but he doesn't even know where to begin. He does not even know why his editor should know, honestly, but that line, that irrevocable and invisible line, had been crossed. Dimitri sighs. </p><p>Dedue takes pity on him. “You don’t have to tell him anything you aren’t comfortable with saying. But, I think he deserves to know about something that is a part of your daily life. If he helped you through it yesterday, then who is to say he wouldn’t be willing to help again?”</p><p>“I don’t want to be a—a thing that needs to be <i>helped</i> constantly, Dedue. He is only my editor. It should not be his obligation.”</p><p>“No, and it’s not,” Dedue agrees with him on this, but then: “But don’t you think that he would have walked away if he hadn’t <i>wanted</i> to help?”</p><p>Dimitri frowns, because he isn't entirely sure of that. Felix is a good person. He tries to stress the more important point. “A year, Dedue. I have been good for an entire year, and one comment was enough for it to all—”</p><p>“Dimitri.” Dedue cuts him off kindly. “Surely I don’t need to remind you that this is all part of the process. One bad day does not negate the work you have been doing this past year. You are still doing very, very good, Dimitri, and you should be proud.”</p><p>Dimitri cannot find it in himself to agree, but he has never liked arguing with Dedue, so he stays silent. Dedue frowns at him from across the kitchen, loudly. “I’m serious. We are all proud of you even if you aren’t proud of yourself. You already seem to be handling this better than you would have, say, a year ago.”</p><p>That is a point he supposes he can concede, because it is true. Dimitri has already showered, changed his clothes, and answered the door: three things he would not have done a year ago if he were in these circumstances then. Those same small victories.</p><p>Dimitri looks at Dedue’s shoes, some plain boots with his jeans tucked neatly into them. Dedue has always been so unnecessarily patient with Dimitri—it is startling. He has never run out of kindness, or help to offer, and Dimitri looks at him and wonders if he could’ve used some of that same kindness and help himself. </p><p>He has no chance to voice these worries, however, because Dedue pushes up from where he was leaned against the counter and stands in the middle of Dimitri’s kitchen. They hold eye contact for a solid five-count before Dedue releases some of the tension with a slight smile, and:</p><p>“You look well, Dimitri. I am happy to see that.”</p><p>It isn’t what he'd been expecting, because he isn’t sure if it’s really true. He doesn’t feel as awful as he has in the past, after previous episodes, but Dimitri can’t tell if part of that is simply due to the numbness still lingering. However, he looks at Dedue, at his broad shoulders and his dark skin and light hair, his red sweater and well-fitting jeans, the familiarity of the angles of his eyebrows and the shape of his lips. </p><p>Dimitri smiles back, the most honest thing he has done this morning.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Dimitri and Felix do not talk for three weeks after the press conference.<p>Well, they <i>speak</i> to one another through means of work, because they have to. Felix sends him updates on the novel, messages the publishing house wants to push forward, and, once, a brief text saying that the press conference will not be aired or published anywhere. Apparently, the recording has been trashed, as well as any and all ‘quotes’ that the journalists had gotten. Dimitri has no clue how he did it, but it is done, and it eases <i>some</i> of the weight pressing down on his chest.</p><p>So they speak, but they do not talk, and it has been three weeks.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Dimitri gets more work done than he would have imagined, after it is all said and done. He doesn’t leave his apartment for much of anything other than to occasionally get food, fresh air, or visit a friend (on the off chance that they are not barging into his apartment. This week alone he has already received Claude and Byleth.)<p>Much of said work is responding to emails, checking in on his novel’s sales—which really <i>are</i> taking off considerably well—and making up drafts for a few advertisements to go up on various websites. It’s relatively easy work, though it still leaves him feeling mostly drained afterwards, and he still cannot think about the press conference for longer than approximately fifteen seconds without feeling an overwhelming urge to scream, but he is making slow and steady progress. He is still taking his medications regularly, and even if he doesn’t make it outside of his apartment <i>every</i> day, he does at least once a week, which is close enough.</p><p>Byleth tries to casually recommend that he signs up for therapy sessions again. It’s been nearly a full year since he has stopped going regularly, largely because they started to cost more than he could afford to pay for weekly appointments in which he felt like he was repeating the same thing over and over. That’s the thing, with him; it really will be an issue that he has to deal with for the rest of his life. Not much can be said about that. There are only so many breathing exercises and grounding techniques to be learned.</p><p>Anyways, Byleth recommends it, in that all-knowing, well-meaning yet awkward way of hers. Dimitri considers it for a day, and then two, and then he is looking at the written down phone number he has kept from his favorite therapist, and then on the third day he realizes that it has been exactly four weeks since he has last seen Felix in person. Since they have last talked about anything other than work, even if the last words spoken between them were an apology.</p><p>It unsettles Dimitri, in some deeply rooted sense that he doesn’t want to look too closely at. Felix hasn’t seemed too bothered in any of their short exchanges they have had; he hasn’t seemed different at all, as a matter of fact. Dimitri hasn’t decided if it is because Felix has realized what a mistake it is to try and approach the friendship territory with Dimitri, or if because Felix genuinely is not bothered by the events of the press conference and is waiting on Dimitri to bridge that troublesome gap that has grown between them. </p><p>It is, Dimitri will eventually learn, neither of those things.</p><p>Once the fifth day comes, and it is the first of November, Dimitri cracks and shoots Felix a text that he had drafted four different variations of. He just wants to know if Felix is in his office today and he asks just that, deciding to bypass any other niceties; he thinks Felix would appreciate that. It’s a Thursday, and Dimitri sends it right at 11 A.M., so he figures Felix must be. He <i>must</i> be. And if he, by some chance, is not, then Dimitri will take that as the sign it rightfully is and back off.</p><p>He doesn’t look at his phone for the following ten minutes, simply because he has a basket laundry to fold. It only takes him seven, and by the time he does check it again, Felix has already responded. Responded five minutes ago, actually. Two minutes after Dimitri sent the text.</p><p>He lingers on this fact for longer than he should. Lingering on it at <i>all</i> is already an issue, but Dimitri pushes that from his mind in favor of reading Felix’s response.</p><p>
  <i>Yeah I am</i>
</p><p>Well, it’s not as Dimitri needs to be told anything more. He ponders on the possibility of Felix not wanting to see him, and eventually reaches the decision that this is something that must be done for himself, as well as Felix, and he owes it to the both of them and their future work together to try. His conversation with Dedue (and Byleth, and Claude, who had been much more succinct than either of the two in telling Dimitri to just <i>grow up and talk to the guy</i>) has been lingering with him lately, even though he had only briefly considered it at the time. Telling Felix much of anything had seemed like nothing more than an added stresser to their partnership before. Now, it seems like more of a necessity.</p><p>Dimitri dresses quickly and with a bare glance in the mirror. It had taken him a full two weeks after the conference for him to be able to look himself properly in the mirror to shave, and the world hadn’t exploded, so Dimitri figured things would be pretty alright if he continued to do so. He has managed to keep the most awful thoughts at bay as well. He isn’t one to get ahead of himself in optimism, but Dimitri doesn’t think that it could hurt him any just to <i>have</i> a tiny bit of it, stored away in his pocket.</p><p>He has to wear his white eyepatch today because his usual black one is in the wash, though Dimitri can already tell that he is probably going to dislike the attention it will bring. For some reason the white stands out much more starkly to people than the black, and Dimitri always walks with his head pushed a little further down on days that he has to wear it out. Today is no different.</p><p>The walk to Garreg Mach is brisk. November is already a chilling wind and a bite to Dimitri’s ears. He had to pull his fur-lined parka from the back of his closet yesterday, and the snugness of it around his shoulders is still a foreign presence, but it shields him from most of the cold, so Dimitri burrows deeper into it.</p><p>Mercifully, no one intercepts him in the lobby. He doesn’t see anyone he recognizes on the ground level, or on the elevator, or as he steps off onto the fourth floor and heads through the cubicles to the back corner, head angled low enough to make it clear that he is avoiding any recognition.</p><p>Once he reaches the corner of Felix’s cubicle office, Dimitri hesitates. He truly doesn’t know how Felix will react upon seeing him. He could be angry at Dimitri, or, even worse, <i>indifferent</i>, and—</p><p>Dimitri inhales and rounds the corner. It does not matter how Felix will greet Dimitri: he will take it.</p><p>The very first thing that Dimitri notices is the fact that, somehow, it looks as though Felix’s hair has grown longer. He has it in a low ponytail against the nape of his neck, and it drapes low down his back, cut off by the back of his desk chair. His eyes are still light when he turns upon Dimitri’s entrance, and they widen almost imperceptibly, his eyebrows curving upwards. </p><p>Then, Dimitri’s eye ticks over to the figure just to Felix’s right, with their butt leaned against the side of his desk but their entire upper body curved sideways towards Felix, who remains seated in his desk chair. They have a shock of ginger hair, wildly cowlicked, and their white sweater amplifies the strength of the color. They, too, turn to Dimitri, placing their hand naturally along the back of Felix’s chair as they do so, and something in Dimitri’s gut—</p><p>“Hi,” They say, cheerful, with a fully honest smile and <i>knowing</i> eyes. “You must be Dimitri.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>a few comments on the last chapter mentioned that they liked how i handled dimitri's mental health, which i appreciate more than i can even put into words. i really tried to treat this chapter and its contents with even more consideration than before, so i can only hope that i managed that.</p><p>i greatly appreciate all of the feedback that i received on ch. 1 :') thank you to everyone!!! u can still find me on twitter @kandacult ^_*</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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